We found the poor woman seated in an old rocking-chair, and looking very miserable. Her husband beat her badly a few nights since, for interfering, when he was, as he said, administering proper chastisement to Willie. Since that time, she can hardly turn her head or see out of one eye. Her nearest neighbor, hearing a great noise, ran to the house, and secured William. The next day the same man brought a complaint against the inebriate for abuse of wife and children, and for refusing to provide for their support. He is now in the county jail, from which he is to be carried to the House of Correction for three months. In the midst of their poverty, the children are really uncommonly prepossessing and intelligent. It is easy to see what they would have been if nurtured in a home of competence and comfort. At the time we entered, Anna was standing on an old stool behind her mother's chair, trying to smoother out the long auburn tresses, and twist them under the cap. I felt no repugnance to the act when I took the broken comb from her hand, and made a beautiful knot at the back of her mother's head. I then bathed her poor bruised temple; and promising to do something for her immediate relief, we left her. I have become much interested in the history of this unfortunate family. Anna, the mother of my _protegés_, is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ryland who lived in Waverley. Anna was the elder of four children, two of whom died in infancy, leaving only the subject of this sketch and Edward her younger brother to crown the hopes of their afflicted parents. Mr. Ryland was in the possession of a valuable farm, part of which was left him by his parents; but which he had greatly enlarged and improved by his own exertions. A new house had been erected on the site of the old one, and everything in and about it exhibited the appearance so common among the farmers of New England, of independence, comfort and respectability. Anna and her brother had been educated with care, and after enjoying and improving the school advantages of the place, they had been sent in turn to academies at a distance. Early in life Anna had become attached and affianced to William Reynolds, son of a neighboring farmer who was regarded as one of the most intelligent and enterprising young men in Waverley. Certainly his noble figure, and bright handsome face, made him a welcome guest, not only at the Ryland farm, but in every place where he chose to visit. Mr. and Mrs. Ryland looked upon William with no little pride as the betrothed of their daughter, while she was at the same time the admiration and envy of the young people of her acquaintance. William Reynolds waited only long enough to be able to erect a neat comfortable cottage upon a spot of ground in Crawford, which had been his inheritance from his father's estate before he brought his Anna to be its presiding genius.