"'Pears to me Martha is in a hurry to get thee away"--and she spoke with some asperity of tone. "But I was going to say that I heard thee has passed through particular trouble--that thy husband had been a drinker, and that he had brought thee and thy children to poverty. This must have caused thee much sufferin'; and the wust of it is, if a man becomes a drinker, though he does break off he is almost sartan to begin again. He never abused thee and thy children, did he, Ruth?" Ruth's pale face flushed red as she quickly withdrew. She did not know what to say in the way of reply, and therefore left the room as speedily as possible; but though she did, the tones of Aunt Debie's voice fell distinctly upon her ear as, in her innocence, she garrulously gave expression to her fears as to the woe that was yet to come. "I pity the poor thing," she said; "for thee jest mind if he does not take to drink again, such men scarcely ever fail to do so. He will likely drink himself to death, and then she will be a widow and her children orphans in a strange land. God help the poor thing!'" Mrs. Gurney closed the door to shut out the sound, but Ruth had heard the ominous words, and they made her feel wretched. She was not angry with Aunt Debie, for she was broad enough to understand, after Mrs. Gurney's explanation, that what would be inquisitive rudeness in another was to be excused in her because of her early environments and her latter afflictions. The major portion of her life had been passed in a primitive community, where, though its inhabitants were as pure as they were simple and unsophisticated, they had no conception of that fine sense of delicacy which is the product of higher culture, and keeps one from prying into the affairs of others. She was, in fact, an exaggerated specimen of those primitive times, for her afflictions had preserved her from the influences which had wrought such a transformation on those around her. Indeed, if she, at the time of which we are writing, could have had her hearing and her sight restored, the world would have appeared as strange to her as it did to Rip Van Winkle after his twenty years' sleep. But though, as we have intimated, Ruth Ashton could, at least to some extent, excuse the old lady, when she understood the circumstances, this did not keep what she said from exerting such an influence upon her, for the time being, as to entirely destroy all peace of mind, and to cause the former to wish she had not accepted Mrs. Gurney's invitation. In a short time after her interview with Aunt Debie, Enoch broke his long silence by giving expression to the opinion that "it was time to go hum." The female members of the party acquiescing, they quietly departed. And as her husband called on his way home from the shop to escort her, Ruth, shortly after, bade her kind host and hostess good-night.