husband has told me that: that is all I know."

"Well, it's not to be spoken of often. But, just to show what the Lord
can do when He sets out to save a poor creature to the uttermost, I will
tell you what He has done for Stephen and me. It must be told in few
words, though. It shakes me to go back to those days.

"We were born in Vermont--as good a State as any to be born and brought
up in. It was quite a country place we lived in. My father was a
farmer--a grave, quiet man. My mother was never very strong; and I was
the only one spared to them of five children. We lived a very quiet,
humble sort of life; but, if ever folks lived contented and happy, we
did.

"Stephen was one of many children--too many for them all to get a living
on their little stony farm; and his father sent his boys off as soon as
they were able to go, and Stephen, who was the second son, was sent to
learn the shoemaker's trade in Weston, about twenty miles away.

"We had kept company, Stephen and me--as boys and girls will, you know--
before he went; and it went on all the time he was learning his trade,
whenever he came home on a visit. When his time was out, he stayed on
as a journeyman in the same place; but he fell into bad hands, I
suppose, for it began to come out through the neighbours, who saw him
there sometimes, that he wasn't doing as he ought to do; and when my
father heard from them that they had seen him more than once the worse
for liquor, he would let him have nothing more to say to me.

"You will scarcely understand just how it seemed to our folks. There
was hardly a man who tasted liquor in all our town in those days. To
have been betrayed into taking too much just once would have been to
lose one's character; and when my father heard of Stephen's being seen a
good many times when he was not able to take care of himself, it seemed
to him that it was a desperate case. I think he would as lief have laid
me down in the graveyard beside my little brothers, as have thought of
giving me to Stephen then.

"I didn't know how much I thought of him till there was an end put to
his coming to our house. I believe I grew to care more about him when
other folks turned against him. Not that I ever thought hard of my
father: I knew he was right, and I didn't mean to let him see that I was
worrying; but he did see it, and when Stephen came home and worked,
sometimes at his trade and sometimes on his father's farm, a year quite