saction, because he knew she
disliked and mistrusted this Taylor.

'A few days before this bill became due your father found to his
dismay that his friend had disappeared from his London house, and no
one knew where he had gone. Still, your father said no word to your
mother of what had happened, but when he was served with the notice
that he must now pay the debt, he was seized with panic at the
thought of the ruin he had brought upon himself and family, and,
instead of bravely staying to do what he could to help those who were
dependent upon him, he went out one morning, and took a passage to
Australia by a vessel that was just leaving the docks.

'It must be said in excuse for him that just at the time there was a
great talk of the rapid fortunes that were being made in the
gold-fields, and he had heard that Taylor had gone there to make his
fortune.

'I need hardly tell you that he did not see his false friend again,
although he heard of him more than once during his wanderings in the
wilds of Australia.

'He wrote one short letter, telling your mother he would come home as
soon as he had made his fortune; and he resolved in his own mind not
to do so until he had accomplished this, for only in this way he
thought he could atone for the past and prove that he was worthy of
her confidence for the future.

'But he found the task much harder than he had supposed, and instead
of making his fortune at the gold-fields he was robbed of the little
he possessed, and was glad to get any sort of work that would provide
him with a crust of bread.

'Then he met with Mrs. Morrison's brother, who was not unlike himself
in many respects--easily led, weak to resist temptation--but in the
hard school of affliction to which they had condemned themselves God
met them, and showed them the folly and sin of which they had been
guilty; and they sought and found pardon through the Lord Jesus
Christ. Then, through the help of God's Holy Spirit, they began to
struggle against the temptations by which they were beset, and in the
struggle grew strong, strong enough to resist even the making of
illegal gains; and so the fortune that was to restore them to home and
country was a long time in the making, and meanwhile they clung to
each other, and to God.'

'But my father might have written to us,' said Fred, still a little
hardly.

'They both wrote to their nearest friends in England. But you must
remember that your mother had left Lon