She looked on the terrified children, the youngest only five years old, and who clung weeping to her knees, as her father threatened to turn her out of doors, never to see them again; and she thought of her mother's last words--her decision was made; and with a heavy heart she performed the self-sacrifice. "Don't say you will never marry me, Lizzie," urged her lover; "I can wait ten years for you, darling." But Lizzie was conscientious; her father had expressly stipulated there should be no "half-way work--no putting off;" all hope must be given up, she never could be his--and forever she bid him farewell. James tried to argue with and persuade her father; but the selfish, obstinate old man would listen to nothing from him. Poor James, finding both immovable, at last sold off his farm, and all his property, and moved away into a distant state; he could not, he said, live near Lizzie, and feel that she never would be his wife. Men are so soon despairing in love affairs, while women hope on, even to death. Poor Lizzie, how her heart sunk when the sight of her lover was denied to her; and she felt even more wretched than she did at the moment of her mother's death. Nothing now remained to her in life but the performance of stern, rigid duty. Two or three years passed by, and one by one her charges departed from her. One brother was placed with a farmer, and the others were apprenticed to good trades. The little white-headed Willie, who at his mother's death was a tiny, roly-poly prattler, only two years old, was becoming a slender, tall youth. Lizzie felt proud as she looked at her crowd of tall boys, when once or twice a year they would assemble at home; and on a Sunday's afternoon, at twilight, on her way to the evening meeting, she would steal down into the quiet church-yard, and kneeling beside her mother's grave, ask, with streaming eyes, if she had not done well. Such moments were fraught with bitter anguish; but a heavenly peace would descend on her, and she said her trials, after the agony was over, seemed lighter to bear. "But I was blessed in one thing, dear Miss Enna," she would exclaim, "not one of those darling boys was taken from me, and all bid fair to turn out well. God surely smiled on the motherless, and gave me strength to perform my labor of love."