racing her fondly, whispered:

"Mother, don't weep so bitterly! You have me; am I nothing? Mother, I
love you more than son ever loved his mother, or suitor his sweetheart,
or husband his wife! Oh! is my love nothing, mother?"

Only sobs answered him.

"Mother," he pleaded, "you are all the world to me; let me be all the
world to you! I can be it, mother; I can be it; try me! I will make
every effort for my mother, and the Lord will bless us!"

Still no answer but convulsive sobs.

"Oh, mother, mother! I will try to do for you more than ever son did for
mother or man for woman before! Dear mother, if you will not break my
heart by weeping so!"

The sobbing abated a little, partly from exhaustion and partly from the
soothing influences of the boy's loving words.

"Listen, dear mother, what I will do! In the olden times of chivalry,
young knights bound themselves by sacred vows to the service of some
lady, and labored long and perilously in her honor. For her, blood was
spilled; for her, fields were won; but, mother, never yet toiled knight
in the battlefield for his lady-love as I will in the battle of life for
my dearest lady--my own mother!"

She reached out her hand and silently pressed his.

"Come, come," said Traverse; "lift up your head and smile! We are young
yet--both you and I! for, after all, you are not much older than your
son; and we two will journey up and down the hills of life together--all
in all to each other; and when at last we are old, as we shall be when
you are seventy-seven and I am sixty, we will leave all our fortune that
we shall have made to found a home for widows and orphans, as we were,
and we will pass out and go to heaven together."

Now, indeed, this poor, modern Hagar looked up and smiled at the oddity
of her Ishmael's far-reaching thought.

In that poor household grief might not be indulged. Marah Rocke took
down her work-basket and sat down to finish a lot of shirts, and
Traverse went out with his horse and saw to look for a job at cutting
wood for twenty-five cents a cord. Small beginnings of the fortune that
was to found and endow asylums! but many a fortune has been commenced
upon less!

Marah Rocke had managed to dismiss her boy with a smile, but that was
the last effort of nature; as soon as he was gone and she found herself
alone, tear after tear welled up in her eyes and rolled down her pale
cheeks; sigh after sigh heaved her bosom.

Ah! the transitory joy of th