The father entered, but at the first sight of him the joy of the children was at an end. He looked as if he had been drinking--his face was flushed, and his brow dark and lowering. Marian shrunk, terrified at his appearance: he was one of the men who had been quarreling over the card-table. The children appeared more frightened and unhappy than surprised at the mood in which he entered. They retreated hastily, seeming to anticipate his intention of pushing them out of the way, and he seated himself before the fire. His wife did not speak; as she glanced at him, she turned first red, then pale, but she bent her eyes over her work, making quiet answers to the rough words he from time to time addressed to her, and turning the wondrous talisman full upon him as she spoke. Its light soon worked a change. He looked less suspiciously around him, his brow relaxed, and the children began to steal nearer and nearer, till at last the youngest climbed to his knees, and prattled away to him in his childish way, as he had before prattled to his mother. The mother smiled, as she rose and prepared to take her finished work to her employer. She hoped to procure the evening meal with the wages of her labor. _He_ had brought in no money to-day, she knew full well, but she did not ask; and with a kindly voice, she requested him to watch over the young ones in her absence, and glided from the door. The talisman must have dazzled his eyes as she went out, for they glistened with moisture; he muttered something, but Marian did not hear what it was, and before she had time to inquire of her conductor, she found herself once more seated in the fairy chariot, and rising rapidly above the smoke and gloom of these homes of misery and want. A little while ago, she would have hailed her escape from this sad region with delight; but now she would fain have seen more of the wearer of the talisman. Something of this kind she remarked to the fairy: "Ah! Marian," answered her guide; "there are jewels which render even squalid poverty attractive, and without which wealth, decked in all its ornaments, is void of charms!"