ense of humiliation as well as bondage robbing him of all
pleasure in life.

Thus it is with him when, after ten years, we find him waiting, in
the chamber of death, for the stroke that is to break the fetters
that so long have bound him. It has fallen. He is free again. In
dying, the sufferer made no sign. Sullenly she plunged into the dark
profound, so impenetrable to mortal eyes, and as the turbid waves
closed, sighing, over her, he who had called her wife turned from
the couch on which her frail body remained, with an inward "Thank
God! I am a man again!"

One more bitter drug yet remained for his cup. Not a week had gone
by, ere the father of his dead wife spoke to him these cutting
words--

"You were nothing to me while my daughter lived--you are less than
nothing now. It was my wealth, not my child, that you loved. She has
passed away. What affection would have given to her, dislike will
never bestow on you. Henceforth we are strangers."

When next the sun went down on that stately mansion which the
wealth-seeker had coveted, he was a wanderer again--poor,
humiliated, broken in spirit.

How bitter had been the mockery of all his early hopes! How terrible
the punishment he had suffered!

SCENE THIRD.

ONE more eager, almost fierce struggle with alluring fortune, in
which the worldling came near steeping his soul in crime, and then
fruitless ambition died in his bosom.

"My brother said well," he murmured, as a ray of light fell suddenly
on the darkness of his spirit: "Contentment _is_ better than wealth.
Dear brother! Dear old home! Sweet Ellen! Ah, why did I leave you?
Too late! too late! A cup, full of the wine of life, was at my lips;
but I turned my head away, asking for a more fiery and exciting
draught. How vividly comes before me now that parting scene! I am
looking into my brother's face. I feel the tight grasp of his hand.
His voice is in my ears. Dear brother! And his parting words, I hear
them now, even more earnestly than when they were first
spoken:--'Should fortune cheat you with the apples of Sodom, return
to your home again. Its doors will ever be open, and its
hearth-fires bright for you as of old.' Ah! do the fires still burn?
How many years have passed since I went forth! And Ellen? But I dare
not think of her. It is too late--too late! Even if she be living
and unchanged in her affections, I can never lay this false heart at
her feet. Her look of love would smite me as with