strong for good as when they came in? Alas! alas! that we
must answer, No! What if Albert Martindale were our son?"

This last sentence pierced me as if it had been a knife.

"He went out just now," continued Mr. Carleton, "so much intoxicated
that he walked straight only by an effort."

"Why did you let him go?" I asked, fear laying suddenly its cold
hand on my heart. "What if harm should come to him?"

"The worst harm will be a night at the station house, should he
happen to get into a drunken brawl on his way home," my husband
replied.

I shivered as I murmured, "His poor mother!"

"I thought of her," replied Mr. Carleton, "as I saw him depart just
now, and said to myself bitterly, 'To think of sending home from my
house to his mother a son in that condition!' And he was not the
only one!"

We were silent after that. Our hearts were so heavy that we could
not talk. It was near daylight before I slept, and then my dreams
were of so wild and strange a character that slumber was brief and
unrefreshing.

The light came dimly in through half-drawn curtains on the next
morning when a servant knocked at my door.

"What is wanted?" I asked.

"Did Mr. Albert Martindale sleep here last night?"

I sprang from my bed, strangely agitated, and partly opening the
chamber door, said, in a voice whose unsteadiness I could not
control, "Why do you ask, Katy? Who wants to know?"

"Mrs. Martindale has sent to inquire. The girl says he didn't come
home last night."

"Tell her that he left our house about two o'clock," I replied; and
shutting the chamber door, staggered back to the bed and fell across
it, all my strength gone for the moment.

"Send her word to inquire at one of the police stations," said my
husband, bitterly.

I did not answer, but lay in a half stupor, under the influence of
benumbing mental pain. After a while I arose, and, looking out, saw
everything clothed in a white mantle, and the snow falling in large
flakes, heavily but silently, through the still air. How the sight
chilled me. That the air was piercing cold, I knew by the delicate
frost-pencilings all over the window panes.

After breakfast, I sent to Mrs. Martindale a note of inquiry about
Albert. A verbal answer came from the distracted mother, saying that
he was still absent, and that inquiry of the police had failed to
bring any intelligence in regard to him. It was still hoped that he
had gone home with some friend, and would return du