were slipshod; and though she had the frame and build of a man, you could not have been with her half an hour before you discovered her insignificance. An intelligent baby could have got the upperhand of her. Even the chickens, roosting now, in open defiance, upon the chair-backs and window -frames, felt themselves her masters.

"Here! ma, marm, Pug's got a letter." Into the room, with these words, three shock-headed boys launched themselves. They swooped at the chickens, that ducked and dived; and amidst the flutter and commotion, and while Mrs. Down was saying, mildly, “Now, boys, don't be cutting up all the time," a tall, overgrown girl made her appearance.

"Have you got a letter, Becky?" asked her mother of her, eagerly.

"Tighter 'n a nutshell she is about it, too," cried one of the boys. "She wouldn't give one of us fellers a squint at it."

"There's a black streak all round it, mother," said the girl, paying no attention

to her brother, "and the postman said somebody must be dead."

"Law, child! what a scare you've given me!" said Mrs. Down, the full-blown redness of her face fading to an ashy white.

She held up the letter, which Becky had laid in her lap. It was deeply edged with black.

"Nobody sends us letters but your uncle Jerry, and this isn't his writing," she murmured, as she tremblingly broke the seal.

The three boys, awed for the moment into decorum, stood watching her in gaping silence..

All at once she crumpled the sheet of note-paper in her hands, and catching her apron to her eyes, sobbed and groaned in the wildest and most distressed manner.

"O, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!" she cried between her sobs.

She rocked herself to and fro; she wrung her hands;. her loosely-held hair broke from its fastenings, and streamed over her shoulders One would think she had gone crazy.

"What is it, mother?" whispered Becky, creeping close to her side. "Don't take

on so."

Her mother looked up at her, and then at the three boys. "Poor lambs," said she, "what will become of you now, the Lord only knows."

Then she burst again into her loud wailing and weeping.

"Is uncle Jerry-dead,” whispered Becky, a second time, hesitating over the last word. Her mother nodded her head. "It's a death-blow to me," she said, brokenly. "I feel I shall not live through it. The last stay has been taken away from us. We must starve now, or go to the almshouse.”

"O, no,” said Becky; and she spoke firmly, and even cheerfully. "It can't be so bad as that."

"Read the letter. She wrote it. She always did have a spite against us."

Becky rescued the crumpled sheet from amongst the tear-bedewed apron-folds, and smoothing it out carefully, carried it to the

л

window, and commenced to spell it out, the boys, meanwhile, looking over her shoulder.

"MADAM" (So the letter ran) :

"Your brother died this morning, very suddenly, of heart disease. I enclose you a check for fifty dollars, which will provide you with mourning, and which will also defray your expenses here and back, should you wish to attend the funeral, which will take place on Thursday.

"This is the last money you need expect from me. Your brother left no will, and of course you have no claims on his family. The many sorrowful preparations which the sudden death of my late lamented husband enjoins upon me, will prevent my writing at further length.

"If you come on, I will take that time to help you decide as to your future course. If not, I will write.

"LOUISA BIddles."

A rather hard, cold letter for one woman,

and she a widow of a few hours, to write to

another, that other being the only sister of her dead husband.

But Mrs. Louisa Biddles was a hard, cold, fashionable woman.

A thorn in her side had the shiftlessness of her sister-in-law always been to her a bone of contention ever between her and her husband.

"Why do you support her in lazy idleness?" she had urged again and again. "Some of the children are old enough to work. It is a shame that she, strong, healthy, and robust, cannot do something for herself. There is no pleasure in such charity, for with it all enough, in that out-of-the-way place, for your sister to keep her whole family in comfort—the house looks worse than an Irish cabin, and the children are as tattered and torn as beggars.'

Folks said that Jeremiah Biddles, whose name was great on change, was "henpecked" at home.

However this might be, in this one instance he always held his ground.