address or even the country in which I am living. I should have seen you once more, but I feared that I should not keep to my resolve, and that you would have had the shame of living with a convict. Goodbye, Ann. For the child's sake you will bear this parting. For God's sake do not think I am cold to you! Oh, Ann, oh my true loving wife, oh mother of my little child, my suffering is too terrible to be told or to be imagined!

" HENRY CLAYTON.”

If

Now that he was coming home, his letter had a new interest. he were guilty would she not forget his guilt and press him to her heart with passionate fondness? Not that love is blind, but clearsighted. Hate is blind, for hate can only see the fault on the surface; while love sees the goodness, even though it be thrice crusted with vice and folly. "Charity covereth a multitude of sins," says the Apostle. Well, in that sense, love is blind; for, clinging to that which is lovely, it is not prone to note that which is unlovely. But Mrs. Clayton's husband was not guilty; he was innocent and persecuted, and the love for his wife was in some degree the cause of his suffering. How could she recompense him for his love? He would have her love, and be comforted. There was the child, too; and the child would be a blessing to him.

As the hour of eleven drew nigh, Mrs. Clayton could neither read nor sit still. She paced the room with her hands tightly clasped together. The ten years' separation was just over. In a little while, in so many minutes, she will behold her husband!

Ah! can it be true? Is it a dream? Is it delirium! Her eyelids are burning; the pulses of her heart are throbbing horribly. Louder than the tick! tick! tick of the clock, she hears the thud! thud! thud! of her heart. In her brain is a wild whirl of conflicting memories; she cannot even for a second keep to one thought. Her husband, her child, the past, the present, and the future, are thought of in the same moment. Is this madness? Oh, that she could hear the sound of a human voice!

But, no; she must be alone! He has promised to come to her if she is alone.

The hour is very nigh. She pauses in her walk, and stands staring at the clock. Can she note the movement of the hands? Now the dial is bleared so that she can see neither hands nor figures! Now the figures are dancing over the dial, and the hands are rushing round.

"Oh, God! save my reason and my life until I have seen him!"

Hush there is the grating sound that precedes the striking of the hour. The wife shrieks, falls on her knees before the clock, and buries her face in her hands. Another age of suffering! Has the clock stopped? Or has it struck, and she unconscious? No; at last the hour has come! Clang! clang! clang! eleven times. To every clang the tortured woman answers with a groan. She rises suddenly, and goes to the door. It is the supreme moment, and her strength returns to her. She is bathed in perspiration, though her face is pallid with the dark, awful pallor of death. She does not totter or tremble. If he is not there she will surely die. If he is there can she look upon him and live? God have mercy on her child! Mercy, mercy, mercy, was the word that hissed over her parched and burning lips.

The door was opened, and she was not alone!

CHAPTER II.

THE FATHER'S RETURN.

SHE stood motionless, and but for a piteous moaning might have been taken for a statue, The eyes fixed in a spellbound gaze. Features rigid as though wrought in marble. A statue that no one could look upon without unspeakable pity.

The man, too, was motionless for a minute. Then his ashy lips moved, but no word, not even a whisper, escaped from him. Joy is sometimes harder to bear than sorrow. The moaning of the wife became more piteous. It was like the last struggle of the fleeting breath. Then the husband's spell of silence was broken.

"Ann, Ann, I am with you! Speak to me-only speak to me." The strong man shook as though he were stricken with palsy, and his husky voice was weak as the voice of a sick girl.

But the wife could not speak. At the sound of his voice the moaning ceased, there was a smothered cry, and she fell towards him. He caught her in his arms, carried her into the parlour, and laid her on the sofa.

"Speak to me, Ann! Darling, speak to me! For mercy's sake speak at least a word to me."

But she spoke not, heard not.

Still as death, not deathlike, but like unto marble. Not like death, but like the dead likeness of life.

Her husband tried in vain to rouse her. He pressed her hand, but the pressure was not returned. He kissed her, and she kissed

him not again. Smitten with a sudden dread, he tore open her dress and put his hand upon her heart.

"She lives, she lives! But oh, my poor girl, what have you suffered? What have you to suffer?"

The countenance of the man, naturally kind and noble, grew black as midnight.

"All this affliction in the name of justice! I cannot redeem your lost life; but I can avenge the wrong."

He clenched his fist and bit his lip until the blood spurted over his iron-grey beard. Revenge! Let the foe of such an avenger speedily make his peace with Heaven!

And as he still looked upon his wife the rage that could only be stilled by the shedding of human blood was for awhile lost in pity, in grief, in love. This man, who in his hot anger was the incarnation of might, rough, rugged might, nerved by fury, became as gentle as is the mother who fondles her first-born babe. He bathed his wife's face with water. He put his lips to hers to breathe into her mouth. He took a flask of brandy from his pocket, and, mixing some of the spirit with water, moistened her lips with it.

The recovery from any faint is always painful, but the coming to from the almost mortal faint which had rendered Ann Clayton unconscious was an agony that tried her husband's courage to look upon. For an hour after she gave signs of animation she continued speechless, sobbing convulsively, clinging to her husband, drawing his face to hers, and his lips to her lips.

Henry had borne trouble and affliction without a murmur; but the suffering of his wife made him fretful as well as sorrowful. Perhaps in his sick sensitiveness he partly mistook the cause thereof.

"Better to have died than have seen you, for the sorrow and the shame is upon me and will remain with me till I die !"

And this despairing wail of the husband loosed the tongue of the wife, and at length she spoke :—

"Not the shame, oh my love, not the shame! only the sorrow, and that is passing away."

He embraced her, laid her on the sofa, and strode up and down the room. It was his old and well-remembered habit.

"For me, Ann, there is no future-only a past. If I could forget, and the world could forget! But the world remembers and I remember. I hear now your prayers to the officers not to take me. Your dreadful screams when the judge sentenced me yet ring in my ears. I have never ceased to mourn for your wasted life. Poor girl! I can't give you back your youth and the years that are gone."

He sat by her on the couch, and she put her arms about his neck. Her emotion was subdued by the agitation of her husband. Forgotten was her own grief when she tried to soothe the grief of her loved one. Her voice was clear and sweet :

“But, darling, in the years to come let us be happy. With you I shall be happy if you are happy with me."

Again pacing the room, Henry told her the story of the last ten years. The imprisonment did not oppress him, because freedom would not restore him to society and to home. When he left the prison he went to America, and worked at the trade he had learnt in prison. From America he went to Australia, in the hope of making some money for his wife and child. That was the one hope of his

But for years he was unfor

life, the one hope for which he lived. tunate. He did no more than earn his daily bread. He tried the gold diggings, and for three years he had no luck. At last he obtained a rich claim, and in a few months he took a thousand pounds' worth of gold to Melbourne. He speculated in mining shares, and his one thousand pounds became five thousand pounds. He would run no further risk. The money belonged not to him, but to his wife and child. How could he remit it to England? The lawyer might be dead, and the money might not reach the hands of her for whom it was intended. So he determined to take the money to England.

"All that long voyage, Ann, I said to myself 'I will not see her or my child.' But when I found your address, I could not forbear to come in the night and look at the place that was the home of my wife and my child; and when I came I could not leave the street until I resolved to see you. I loved you so truly, dearest, that, being branded with shame, I would not see you. Yet, such is my love that, being so near, I could not forbear to see you."

Then Ann told him how in the long years of separation she had been upheld by the steadfast hope of meeting. How while he was in prison she thought every day that he would be released. How when he went abroad she thought every day he would return. How every day she had all things ready for his coming home. How she had cared for that easy chair-his chair-and knew that he would some day sit in it. How she declined out-door pupils, for fear she should be out when he arrived. How for ten long years she had listened for the knock of the postman, expecting a letter from him.

"Henry, my husband, what have I done unto you that you should not be with me? Without you my life is indeed lost. With you I

am the happiest of happy wives. Besides, dearest, there is our child."

"Child! Ah, Ann, that is the sting that maddens me. You saw how I loved our baby. At that hour when I became childless and my child fatherless she could talk, and, though not four years old, was my companion. Do you remember how she fondled me, and would cry to go out with me, and would watch for my coming home? Do you forget, Ann, how she prattled, and how quickly she learnt the nursery rhymes I used to repeat to her when she sat upon my knee? In the gaol and in the far off land I cherished the memory of my child. I have not forgotten a word she said, or how prettily she lisped my name. I do not forget the little frock and the hat she wore the last time she went out with me. In the prison and in the distant land day and night I had her in my mind and in my heart. I thought of the bliss of seeing her growing into childhood and into girlhood. I thought of the bliss of caring for her, working for her, watching over her, teaching her, making her mind one with my mind, and so binding her to me by bonds that could not be broken. Whether a prisoner or an exile these thoughts were ever present, and they tortured me. For my living child was dead to me, and I, her living father, was dead to her; worse, ah, worse than dead, for had I been dead you might from year to year have taken her to my grave and taught her to love me. But you could not say to our child, 'Your father is a convict!' No, Ann, for me there is no hope; there is no future but the grave."

When he ceased to speak his wife arose from the sofa, and put her arms about him.

"That, dearest, is not a righteous thought. If you had fallen, should your child spurn you? Would you in like manner have spurned your father or your mother? No, Henry. And being, as you are, guiltless, though afflicted, will you cast off your child? As I love you, so our child will love you.'

"Does Alice think that I am dead ?"

"She mourned for you, and they told her you were dead. I tried hard to obey you, but I could not. I could not tell her you were dead. I told her some day you would come home. But she believes you are dead. Oh, what happiness for her to find that her father lives !" "I fear, yet long to see her."

"Come, darling, and look at her whilst she sleeps."

So they went to Alice's bedroom.

The father entered reverently. He followed his wife with downcast eyes until he stood by the bedside of his child. His lips were