rousing up his better nature. Once he rose as if to go--stood
irresolutely for a moment, and then sitting down by the bedside, clasped
her thin pale hand in his with a caressing motion, and said, "Mary
you've had a hard time, but I hope there are better days in store for
us, don't get out of heart," and there was a moisture in his eyes in
which for a moment beamed a tender, loving light. Belle immediately felt
her indignation changing to pity. Surely she thought within herself,
this man is worth saving--There is still love and tenderness within him,
notwithstanding all his self-ruin, he reminds me of an expression I have
picked up somewhere about "Old Oak," holding the young fibres at its
heart, I will appeal to that better nature, I will use it as a lever to
lift him from the depths into which he has fallen. While she was
thinking of the best way to approach him, and how to reach that heart
into whose hidden depths she had so unexpectedly glanced, he arose and
bending over his wife imprinted upon her lips a kiss in which remorse
and shame seemed struggling for expression, and left the room.

"Mother Graham," said Belle, "a happy thought has just struck me,
Couldn't we induce Mr. Gough to attend the meeting of the Reform Club?
Mr. R.N. speaks tonight and he has been meeting with glorious success as
a Temperance Reformer, hundreds of men, many of them confirmed
drunkards, have joined, and he is doing a remarkable work, he does not
wait for the drunkards to come to him, he goes to them, and wins them by
his personal sympathy, and it is wonderful the good he has done, I do
wish he would go."

"I wish so too," said Martha Graham.

"If he should not return while I am here will you invite him to attend?
Perhaps Mrs. Gough can spare you an hour or two this evening to