art-disease, had given Mrs. Abigail the whip-hand of husband and
daughter, and she was not slow to know her advantage, using her heart in
a most heartless way.

August could not blame Julia for not writing, for he had tried to break
the blockade by a letter sent through Jonas and Cynthy Ann, but the
latter had found herself so well watched that the note oppressed her
conscience and gave a hangdog look to her face for two weeks before she
got it out of her pocket, and then she put it under the pillow of
Julia's bed, and had reason to believe that the suspicious Mrs. Anderson
confiscated it within five minutes. For the severity of maternal
government was visibly increased thereafter, and Julia received many
reminders of her ingratitude and of her determination to kill her
self-sacrificing mother by her stubbornness.

"Well," Mrs. Anderson would say, "it's all one to me whether the world
comes to an end or not. I should like to live to see the day of
judgment. But I shan't. No affectionate mother can stand such treatment
as I receive from my own daughter. If Norman was only at home!"

It is proper to explain here that Norman was her son, in whom she took a
great deal of comfort when he was away, and whom she would have utterly
spoiled by indulgence if he had not been born past spoiling. He was the
only person to whom she was indulgent, and she was indulgent to him
chiefly because he was so weak of will that there was not much glory in
conquering him, and because her indulgence to him was a rod of
affliction to the rest of her family.

Failing to open communication through Jonas and Cynthy Ann, August found
himself in a desperate strait, and with an impatience common to young
men he unhappily had recourse to Betsey Malcolm. She often visited
Julia, and twice, when Julia was not at meeting, he went home with the
ingenuous Betsey, who always pretended to have something to tell him
"about Jule," and who yet, for the pure love of mischief-making, tried
to make him think as poorly as possible of Julia's sincerity, and who,
from pure love of flirtation, puckered her red lips, and flashed at him
with her sensuous eyes, and sighed and blushed, or rather flushed, while
she sympathized with him in a way that might have been perilous if he
had been an American instead of a constant-hearted "Dutchman," wholly
absorbed with the image of Julia. But, so far as carrying messages was
concerned, Betsey was certainly a non-conductor. She p