ts pleasures and misfortunes. It haunts our consciences, and is ever
before our eyes. The murderer, though safely concealed from the world,
and who may have escaped punishment by man for years, still has the
Past to confront and harass his mind. Penitence and prayer may
lighten, but can never remove it. Surrounded though he be with health
and happiness, the demon of the Past will confront him ever, and make
his life wretched. Oh, what a fearful thing is that same Past, we hear
spoken of lightly by those whose lives have been along a smooth and
flowery track over the same, and unmarked by a single adversity or
crime. A single deviation from the path of honor, integrity and
virtue, and as years roll on the memory of those past hours will cause
bitter self-reproach, for it will be irremovable. So with past
happiness as it is with misery and crime. The beggar can never forget
his past joys in contemplating the present or hoping for the future,
but it must ever remain a source of never-failing regret and the
fountain of unhealable wounds.

The Past!--but no more of it, as we write the recollection of past
happiness and prosperity, of past follies and errors rise up with
vividness, and though it is never forgotten, burns with a brighter
light than before.

Several days after his conversation with Harry, Alfred received a
message from Dr. Humphries requesting him to meet that gentleman at
ten o'clock the same morning at his residence. Accordingly, at the
appointed hour, he presented himself to the Doctor, by whom he was
received with great cordiality and kindness.

"I have sent for you, Mr. Wentworth," began the doctor, as soon as
Alfred was seated, "to speak with you on a subject which interests you
as well as myself. As you are aware, I promised your wife when she was
dying that your remaining child should never want a home while I
lived. This promise I now desire you to ratify by gaining your consent
to his remaining with me, at least until he is old enough not to need
the care of a lady."

"You have placed me under many obligations already, Dr. Humphries,"
replied Alfred, "and you will pardon me if I feel loath to add another
to the already long list. I have already formed a plan to place my
child in the hands of the Sisters of Charity at Charleston, by whom he
will be treated with the greatest kindness, and with but small expense
to myself. You must be aware that as a soldier my pay is very small,
while I have no opp