the stair below.

"Is Polly going to stay in this house?" asked Mrs. Hamilton.

"She is," was the reply.

"Then I leave to-night," said Mrs. Hamilton.

"Very well, you can go," returned the husband, growing stronger in
himself each moment.

Mrs. Hamilton turned away to her own room, where she remained until
supper time, when Lenora asked "If she had got her chest packed, and
where they should direct their letters!" Neither Margaret nor her
father could refrain from laughter.

Mrs. Hamilton, too, who had no notion of leaving the comfortable
Homestead, and who thought this as good a time to veer round as any
she would have, also joined in the laugh, saying, "What a child you
are, Lenora!"

Gradually the state of affairs at the homestead was noised throughout
the village, and numerous were the little tea parties where none dared
speak above a whisper to tell what they had heard, and where each and
every one were bound to the most profound secrecy, for fear the
reports might not be true. At length, however, the story of the china
closet got out, causing Sally Martin to spend one whole day in
retailing the gossip from door to door. Many, too, suddenly remembered
certain suspicious things which they had seen in Mrs. Hamilton, who
was unanimously voted to be a bad woman, and who, of course, began to