rangers, and the three--husband, wife, and
child--were alone in the wide world, with their burden of poverty and
woe, all the harder to bear from the fact that they were unused to it.
Thus mused the sick man in the solitude of his chamber, and while he
mused a mellower gleam of light fell upon his pillow and illumined his
shrunken features, and a soft step was by the bed-side, and a beloved
voice in his ear, telling him news that made him willing to die. God had
sent them a friend! Even when he had been repining at the decrees of His
Providence, that Providence was working out his best and truest good. He
felt that his days would be few upon the earth, and that his Mary would
soon follow him; but their darling Jennie would be sheltered and taught,
and that by a true disciple of their Lord and Master. No more anguish
lest his precious child should become a prey to the wary and dissolute;
no more grief at her withered, cheerless youth; no more sorrowings for
the wants that he could not appease. "Oh! too much! too much mercy and
goodness hast thou shown toward Thine unworthy servants, my Saviour and
my God!" murmured he, and a violent hemorrhage ensued, occasioned by the
sudden shock of the unlooked for joy.

CHAPTER V.

Before another week had elapsed, Mr. and Mrs. Grig were comfortably
settled in a pleasant cottage belonging to Mrs. Dunmore, whose
increasing benevolence had found a delightful impulse in the certainty
that the poor woman was no other than one of her school-girl
acquaintances, whom she had most dearly loved, but of whom she had heard
little since they had completed their studies. They had married, and in
their new relationships lost sight of each other, until, by a mysterious
Providence, they were now united. It would have been but a mockery in
Mrs. Grig to appear at all reluctant to accept the support she so much
needed, since her own precarious health, and her husband's approaching
dissolution rendered it impossible for her to obtain her own livelihood.
Gladly, therefore, and with alacrity, they left the scene of their past
troubles and necessities for the pretty cottage and the congenial
society of their disinterested friend, yet scarcely were they
established in their new abode when the messenger of death came to claim
his victim. The child was there, with her young head nestling in her
dying father's bosom; the wife stood by with a deep but subdued grief,
and the faithful friend was near with