Her children--three in number--cause her deepest anxiety; they are the
heroes of our tale, and must at once be introduced to the reader.





Chapter IV.
A Youth Trained in the Way He Should Walk.




To-morrow--
'Tis a period nowhere to be found
In all the hoary registers of time,
Unless, perchance, in the fool's calendar.
Wisdom disdains the word, nor holds society
With those who own it.
'Tis Fancy's child, and Folly is its father;
Wrought of such stuff as dreams are, and as baseless
As the fantastic visions of the evening.
--Coulton.


Like one of those rare and beautiful flowers found on the mountain-
side in fellowship with plants of inferior beauty, the heir of the
Cassier family is a strange exception of heroic virtue in the midst
of a school of seduction. The saints were never exotics in their own