Dry clothes had been procured for Hattie, and she had recovered from her fright a little when Daniels came. Daniels told Montgomery all about her, and they both believed her innocent, and resolved to save her. The charge was surely false, they said, and they went back to her, dismissed those about her, and asked her to tell them her trouble, which, in her plain, simple way she did. She had been charged by Harland with having filched from him a valuable diamond ring, worth three hundred dollars. She had denied it; and Harland had asked her to let her room be searched, and she had willingly done so; and in company with an officer, she had gone to her room with Charlotte and Mr. and Mrs. Brown, and allowed the search; and there, to her consternation, in her own reticule, wrapped up in a little white paper, was found the very ring Harland had described. "The villain slipped it in there in the search!" exclaimed Daniels. "No, no," said she, "Mr. Brown opened the box, and found the reticule, and examined it himself. Harland did not touch it." "Did he examine anything?" "No, he didn't touch anything," said she. "Mr. Brown and Mrs. Brown did the searching; he looked on." "Then," said Montgomery, "the villain had, in some way, got the ring in there. He knew what the search would result in,--felt sure of his game." Mr. Brown was convinced of the girl's guilt, and was going to discharge her. He was dreadfully perplexed by it, for he had thought Hattie the best of girls; but her guilt was so apparent to him as to excite his old Puritan sense of justice. Mercy lost its hold in his heart, but he consented, at Harland's suggestion, to let her stay a day or so longer. Harland said, that now he had got his ring he did not care to punish her; that he presumed she had been sorely tempted by it, for she had seen it in his possession, and he knew well enough when she took it. He thought it too bad to not give her another trial; but Mr. Brown would have no thief in his employ, but would let her stay a day or two,--but not to work,--till Harland could get her a place. When Daniels and Montgomery got to this part of her story, they could account for the man's villany; and consulting with each other away from Hattie, concluded to send at once for Mrs. Daniels, for they saw that there were probably things which Hattie would prefer to tell to a woman. While the carriage was gone for Mrs. D., they learned further of Hattie's story: that she partly loved Harland, that she was innocent of the theft, and somehow suspected him of having planned to destroy her character. The light began that day to open upon her mind, and she loathed him; and so dreadful were her feelings, and so deep her sense of wrong at Mr. Brown's hands, in that he had no charity for her, that, brooding over it all, and thinking what a horrible story would reach her home about her, she got frenzied, and resolved to put an end to her life. She expected Harland at about such an hour, and the nearer that