Gaut Gurley

han an old and foolish father, who

his surprise at the circumstance, and inquired the cause of his absence. But, perceiving that the subject gave pain to Mrs. Elwood, who deemed it prudent but to repeat, as she hesitatingly did, w

she knew them to be, fell as if in mockery to her feelings. "Pleasant slumbers for me! Heaven grant they may be made so by his speedy com

ace, the concomitants of vice, fall on him, she must participate equally in the physical evil, and drink as much deeper of the cup of moral misery as her unblunted sensibilities are more lively, and her sense of right and wrong are more acute, than those of him who has become dead to the one and lost to the other. What wonder, then,

e night, till the long prayed-for daylight, which she supposed, at the farthest, would bring back her truant husband, made its welcome appearance. But daylight came not this time to remove the cause of her anxieties. Elwood had several times before staid out nearly through the night, but the approach of daylight had always, till now, brought him home; and, not making his appearance, as she confidently expected, she became, as the morning advanced, really alarmed for his personal safety, and would have immediately sent out for him, but she knew not whom to send. She therefore concluded to put off the already long-

, he said, would be likely soon to be found at his store, left the house. At the usual dinner hour, Arthur Elwood returned t

een my husband?" sh

e is somewhere in the city, I

urn?" persisted the surp

s be?-what d

d Arthur, with a though

ask his opinion. But, soon regaining her usual composure, she led the way to the dinner-table, where the meal that followed was partake

finished his repast, "and I shall also take the liberty of looking into the condition of his affairs. After

ead as if in reply to the question respecting her still absent husband, which he saw, by the painfully inquiring expression of her c

ing you, and of course without apprising you of what I may have discovered respecting your husband and his

ow all," rather gasped t

the truth,-other

him, I came on to ascertain for myself whether such help would be thrown away, or really relieve him, as he represented, from a mere temporary embarrassment. I have now been into the painf

er; "and O Arthur, how I have tried and wept and prayed to induce hi

miscalculations in business, folly and extravag

other, with a startled look, "you don't mean but

r this. Still, you may as well know it now as ever.

ance. She knew her husband's property had been a large one; and the announcement, from one she could not disbelieve, that it was all gone, struck

g glances at the face of the other, whose distress evidently de

my time is abou

eave for my husband wh

n effort to ap

ropping them into her lap, "with you, and for you alone, against a day of necessity, I leave that trifle-n

la

as happened that I

ce; for I wished you to see him. But I am now lo

on and heir, and learn to profit by a rich man's errors; for, till he does this, whic

it hardly does him justice. He is not

mother's eyes, probably, and speak with a mother's heart. I will in

l interview, and abruptly depart, leaving Mrs. Elwood to struggle in secret with the chaos of thoughts and emotions which Arthur's unexpected revelation had brought over her. She was not left long, however, to struggle with her feelings alone. In a short time the sound of a familiar fo

countenance, joined to his father's manly proportions. "I learned, as I came into the city, an hour ago, that father had just failed, his store

ss by the bodings and fears of the evil day, which, as things were going, I felt must eventually come; but never, till within this very hour, did I dream that our misfortunes were so near. But, though the

; and I did not suppose you thought eno

could not help thinking of your disappoin

usands who begin with no other resources than what lie in clear heads and strong hearts. I can take

t my only hope; and I know not now but that you must be my on

t come, cheer up, and let us go in an

ng more than a sort of practical menace to enforce payment, he saw not only how he could frame a plausible excuse for his guilty absence, but make the circumstance an irresistible plea for forcing from his brother a loan sufficient to enable him to arrest his failure and continue business. On entering the room, therefore, after saluting his wife and son in a sort of brisk, unconcerned manner, and muttering that he "thought they would never let him get home again," he eagerly inquired for Arthur; and, on being informed that his brother had started for his home, without leaving any note or word for him, and especially on being told by his son-as he at length calmly and persistingly was, in despite of his multiplied prevarications and denials, what they all knew, and what he himself should have been the last to be ignorant of-that the question of his failure, for more than he could ever pay, had already been settl

obscure, hired cottage; then the saddening bodings and deep concern felt in seeing the means of living daily diminishing, with no prospect of ever being replenished; and, finally, the humiliating resort of the wife and children to the needle or menial employments, for the actual necessaries of life,-these, all these, are but the usual graduated vicissitudes of sorrow and trial which are allotted to those whose folly and extravagance have suddenly thrown them on the downward track of fortune, and which the Elwoods, in common with others, were now doomed to experience, and, on the part of Mrs. Elwood, especially, with aggravations not necessarily incident to such reverses. She would have borne all the deprivations and evils incident to her husband's failure without a murmur, could she have seen in him any ame

some distance, he reached an elevation which overlooked the city, and, feeling a little fatigued, he sat down on a mossy hillock to rest and enjoy the prospect. As he cast his eye over that busy haunt of men, with its numerous spires shooting upward, its long lines of princely dwellings, its encircling forest of masts, its lofty warehouses, and other evidences of wealth and business, his own former important participation in its busy scenes, and his present worse than insignificant position there, rose in vivid contrast in his awakening mind; and the thought of his past but squandered wealth came up only to add

icate that the angel of mercy was at length spreading his wings at the same time over both heads of this unfortunate family. She had been having one of her most disconsolate days, and was sitting alone in her little room, gloomily pondering over her disheartening trials, without being able to see one ray of light in the dark future, when she received a call from one of her husband's chief creditors; who announced that those creditors, at a recent meeting, having ascertaine

onduct, and of wonder at the blindness and folly which had permitted him so long to persevere in it, told his gratified companion all that had that day passed through his mind,-his sudden sense of shame and degradation; his bitter self-reproaches, and succeeding determination to reform; to atone for the past, as far as he could, by future good conduct; to begin, in fine, the world anew, and, after placing himself beyond the reach of those temptations to which he had so fatally yielded, devote the remainder of his days to honest industry. And she, an

on which they m

ns which he might not always h

o a new lot of land in the very outskirts of civilization. You, however, should I succeed

fluences of this wicked city, the better. Yes, to the

ing may be obtained from the cultivation of the soil alone; but where more may be made, at particular seasons, in taking the valuable furs that there abound. The

th the trickery of trade, and to be longing for the country lif

he eventful day, joyfully fell in with his father's proposition; when it was soon decided that the latter should take hal

a journey on foot, which, contrary to the wishes of his wife and son, he decided should be his mode of travelling. He then went to bed, slept six hours, rose, dressed, bade