days. Her dress was plain and coarse, but clean and well fitting;
and about her whole person was an air of neatness and taste. She
could not now be called beautiful; yet in her marred features--
marred by suffering and grief--were many lineaments of beauty; and
much that told of a true, pure woman's heart beating in her bosom.
Life came slowly back to the stilled heart, and it was nearly half
an hour before the circle of motion was fully restored.

Then, the twain, with their child, tenderly borne in the arms of
her father, went sadly homeward, leaving more than one heart
heavier for their visit.

I saw more of the landlord's wife on this occasion than before.
She had acted with a promptness and humanity that impressed me
very favorably. It was plain, from her exclamations on learning
that her husband's hand inflicted the blow that came so near
destroying the child's life, that her faith for good in the
tavern-keeping experiment had never been strong. I had already
inferred as much. Her face, the few times I had seen her, wore a
troubled look; and I could never forget its expression, nor her
anxious, warning voice, when she discovered Frank sipping the
dregs from a glass in the bar-room.

It is rarely, I believe, that wives consent freely to the opening
of taverns by their husbands; and the determination on the part of
the latter to do so, is not unfrequently attended with a breach of
confidence and good feeling never afterward fully healed. Men look
close to the money result; women to the moral consequences. I
doubt if there be one dram-seller in ten, between whom and his
wife there exists a good understanding--to say nothing of genuine