t only twenty per cent. would be needed. A new
set of directors laughed him, and others like him, to scorn. He would
have sold his stock, but he found it quoted at only twenty-five cents on
the dollar, and that price he could not prevail upon himself to take.

So he sat on this drear Thanksgiving-Day despondent beside his hearth.
With a hundred hard lines furrowing his pale face, telling of the work
of time and struggle and misfortune, he looked the incarnation of silent
sorrow and hopelessness, waiting in quiet meekness for the coming of
Death,--without desire, but without dread.

It was not strange that on this day there should come into the hearts of
both Jacob and Ruth, his wife, sad and dismal memories. Still his gaze
wandered silently about the room, and she plied unceasingly her stiff,
bright knitting-needles. One would have thought her a figure of stone,
sitting so pale and bolt upright, but for the activity of the patiently
industrious fingers.

Presently Jacob spoke.

"Ruth," he said, "it is a bitter time for us, and we are sore oppressed;
but what does the Psalmist say to such poor, worn-out creatures as we
are? 'The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth
in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the
Lord upholdeth him with his hand. I have been young, and now am old; yet
have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.'
Wife, we are not forsaken of the Lord, although all earthly things seem
to go wrong with us."

She made no verbal reply; but there was a nervous flutter in the poor,
wan fingers, as she still plied the needles, and two large tears rolled
silently down her checks and fell upon the white kerchief she wore over
her shoulders.

"We have still a house over our heads," continued Jacob, "and
wherewithal to keep ourselves fed and clothed and warmed; we have but a
few years more to live; let us thank God for what blessings He has yet
vouchsafed us."

She arose without a word, stiff, angular, ungainly, and they knelt
together on the floor.

Meanwhile the snow fell thicker and faster without, and blew in fierce
clouds against the windows. The wind was rising and gaining power, and
it whistled wrathfully about the house, howling as in bitter mockery at
the scene within. Sometimes it swelled into wild laughter, and again
dropped into low and plaintive wailings. It was very dismal out in the
cold, and hardly more cheerful in the