husband's conscience at its true value. It was not that she felt one
moment's doubt as to its sincerity, but she knew dot so far as it
affected the future, it was a mere cry and nothing more.

The years rolled on. The children were growing up. Ephraim had entered
his fifteenth year. Viola was a little pale girl of twelve. In opinion
of the Ghetto they were the most extraordinary children in the world.
In the midst of the harassing life to which her marriage with the
gambler had brought her, Gudule so reared them that they grew to be
living reflections of her own inmost being. People wondered when they
beheld the strange development of "Wild" Ascher's children.

Their natures were as proud and reserved as that of their mother. They
did not associate with the youth of the Ghetto; it seemed as though they
were not of their kind, as though an insurmountable barrier divided
them. And many a bitter sneer was hurled at Gudule's head.

"Does she imagine," she often heard people whisper, "that because her
father was a farmer her children are princes? Let her remember that her
husband is but a common gambler."

How different would have been their thoughts had they known that the
children were Gudule's sole comfort. What their father had never heard
from her, she poured into their youthful souls. No tear their mother
shed was unobserved by them; they knew when their father had lost and
when he had won; they knew, too, all the varying moods of his unhinged
mind; and in this terrible school of misery they acquired an instinctive
intelligence, which in the eyes of strangers seemed mere precocity.

The two children, however, had early given evidence of a marked