hing.

Her mouth grew drier and hotter, as she sat there looking into the face,
polishing the glass with her hand, kissing it. "I'm so tired, Stephen!"
she would whisper now and then. Only those who know the unuttered
mysterious bond in the soul of a true wife and husband can comprehend
what Martha Yarrow bore, when it was torn apart, and by no fault of
hers. "God meant him for me," she sometimes said, savagely; "no man had
a right to part us." She looked at the picture, feeling that he was
purer than any baby she had nursed at her breast, nearer God. "It was
his religion was to blame. That was the ruin of us all. I believe he
never knew who the good God was; how could he?" thinking of his father,
who used to sit in the chimney-corner,--one of those acrid
doctrine-professors who sour the water of life into gall and vinegar
before they dole it out to their children. She was glad she had told him
her mind before they parted,--to what his teaching had brought his son.
"I cut deep that day, and I thank God for it," she said, her face white.

She had brought the children here to be near the penitentiary, but she
had never been allowed to see him. No letters came from him. His
brother, John Yarrow, sent hers to him. There was some formula of
admission, he said, which she did not understand. The time was nearly
up; in one year more he would be free. Well, and then? He had been in
one of the ways that butted down on hell; how would he come back to her?
In all these years, silence. Who would bring him back? Who? They were
keen enough to put him in,--but who would stay with him, to say, "You've
slipped, boy, but stand up again"? Who would hold out a kind hand at the
gate, when he came out, with "Here's a place, Yarrow. Here's home, and
love, and God waiting; try another chance"? Who would do that? No wonder
she looked out that night, thinking there was some work forgotten.

Martha sat there until dawn came, moving only to replenish the fire lest
the children should take cold. In all her life she never forgot that
night. Some furious instinct seemed at work within her, goading her to
be up and doing. What should she do? Why should she disquiet herself?
Her husband was safe asleep in his cell. Yet all night long she could
not keep her soul back from crying to God to save him in his deadly
peril, to bring him there at once to her, to the children. When morning
broke, cold and sweet-breathed, russet clouds, dyed with the latent
cri