"Oh Aunt Leth, Aunt Leth!" cried Phoebe. "Can nothing be done?--nothing, nothing!" "I fear not, dear child," said Aunt Leth, in a voice of quiet despair. "Your uncle and I have thought of every possible way in which our dear home might be saved, but thinking and talking will not stave off impending ruin. To-morrow we shall be beggared and disgraced." There was no light in the room. On a stool sat Uncle Leth, with his face buried in his hands; Aunt Leth sat on a chair by his side with her arm upon his neck, vainly striving to console him; Fanny lay upon the sofa, sobbing; Robert sat moodily in a corner. To-morrow the acceptance for three hundred pounds was due, and they had not a shilling to meet it. They had been talking in the dark for an hour, and the parents had deemed it right that their children should be made acquainted with the blow that was about to fall upon them. Phoebe, as one of the family, could not be left in ignorance, although they would cheerfully have spared her the grief into which they were plunged. All was now known, and ruin stared them in the face. Aunt Leth was the least demonstrative of the group, and she suffered perhaps the most. Her trembling limbs, her quivering voice, her pitiful glances as her eyes wandered around, denoted the agony of her soul. Phoebe could not bear to look toward her. Dark as was the room, she saw and understood it all, and she was racked with anguish. Had it been any other person than Jeremiah Pamflett from whom the money had been borrowed, they believed that some respite would have been granted them; but he was their bitterest enemy, and they were convinced that he was the moving spirit through whom the relentless decree had been issued that not a day's grace would be allowed. Troubles and griefs had fallen to the lot of Aunt Leth in the course of her happy married life, and she had met them cheerfully; but this overwhelming stroke had broken her down. There are shocks against which the bravest cannot contend, and this was one. "It is I," suddenly cried Uncle Leth, starting up, and pacing the room in a frenzy of excitement--"It is I who have brought this ruin and disgrace upon the beloved ones I should have shielded and protected! This is how I have repaid them for the love which has been showered upon me! Wretch that I am!--I do not deserve to live!" They clung about him, and besought him to be calm. They called him by the most endearing names. Only Phoebe did not move from her chair. It was terrible to witness his agony; but so sweet and tender and true were their ministerings that they succeeded in their loving endeavours. He burst into tears, and sank upon the stool, and laid his head upon his wife's knees.