enjoying such kindness at the hands of these friends, he knew they were
being neglected.

Though he had never written home, and they knew nothing about him, he kept
in pretty good touch with their affairs through the letters the girls wrote
to their cousins. In every one they had spoken of him, and when cold
weather came on, the burden of their letters was for Austin.

After Austin left, his father had hired a woman to keep house for a while,
but she did not stay long. Help such as he needed was hard to get, and he
had not been able to procure another housekeeper. The girls were hardly old
enough to understand how to keep all the ends of the housework going, and
their father was as helpless as they. Home had gone in a most haphazard
manner. Mr. Hill had encouraged the children to accept places to work as
they had been offered. It was only occasionally that they were all at home
together. A sense of love and loyalty for home was fading out of their
minds, as was also the sense of moral obligation. The younger children were
becoming rebellious and evil-minded. All this Austin read between the lines
of the letters. His heart ached as he thought of his dear mother and how
different it would have been had she lived. He would be jolly all the
evening with Harry and his wife, but when he lay upon his bed, his pillow
was often wet with his tears. As yet, though, he could not see it his duty
to go home.

"Where do you suppose Austin is? Does he ever think of home? I wonder if he
is yet alive. Have you heard anything of him?" wrote Amy in one of her
letters.

"Do not worry about Austin," her uncle had written in reply; "he is able to
care for himself, and I am certain he is getting on all right."