his village were loosening fast. Under all, it is true, there was what a
wiser and older person than Helen would have hailed as the redeeming
promise. But that something was grief,--a sublime grief in his own sense
of falling, in his own impotence against the Fate he had provoked and
coveted. The Sublimity of that grief Helen could not detect; she saw
only that it was grief, and she grieved with it, letting it excuse every
fault,--making her more anxious to comfort, in order that she might save.
Even from the first, when Leonard had exclaimed, "Ah, Helen, why did you
ever leave me?" she had revolved the idea of return to him; and when in
the boy's last visit he told her that Burley, persecuted by duns, was
about to fly from his present lodgings, and take his abode with Leonard,
in the room she had left vacant, all doubt was over. She resolved to
sacrifice the safety and shelter of the home assured her. She resolved
to come back and share Leonard's penury and struggles, and save the old
room, wherein she had prayed for him, from the tempter's danger ous
presence. Should she burden him? No; she had assisted her father by
many little female arts in needle and fancy work. She had improved
herself in these during her sojourn with Miss Starke. She could bring
her share to the common stock. Possessed with this idea, she determined
to realize it before the day on which Leonard had told her Burley was to
move his quarters. Accordingly she rose very early one morning; she
wrote a pretty and grateful note to Miss Starke, who was fast asleep,
left it on the table, and before any one was astir, stole from the house,
her little bundle on her arm.

She lingered an instant at the garden-gate, with a remorseful sentiment,
--a feeling that she had ill-repaid the cold and prim protection that
Miss Starke had shown her. But sisterly love carried all before it. She
closed the gate with a sigh, and went on.