that her anxiety was over, with fatigue and agitation. Thankful to the bottom of her heart, yet at the same time doubly worn out with that deliverance, confused with the lights, the noises, and the excitement of the scene, and beginning already to take up her other burden, and to wonder by times, waking up with sharp touches of renewed anguish, how she might find Susan, and whether "any change" had appeared in her other child. It was thus that the great Salem congregational meeting, so renowned in the connection, ended for the minister's mother. She left them still making speeches when she emerged into Grove Street. The political effect of Tozer's address, or the influence which his new doctrine might have on the denomination, did not occur to Mrs. Vincent. She was thinking only of Arthur. Not even the darker human misery by her side had power to break through her preoccupation. How the gentle little woman had shaken off that anxious hand which grasped her old black dress, she never knew herself, nor could any one tell; somehow she had done it: alone, as she entered, she went away again--secret, but not clandestine, under that veil of her widowhood. She put it up from her face when she got into the street, and wiped her tears off with a trembling, joyful hand. She could not see her way clearly for those tears of joy. When they were dried, and the crape shadow put back from her face, Mrs. Vincent looked up Grove Street, where her road lay in the darkness, broken by those flickering lamps. It was a windy night, and Dr. Rider's drag went up past her rapidly, carrying the doctor home from some late visit, and recalling her thoughts to her own patient whom she had left so long. She quickened her tremulous steps as Dr. Rider disappeared in the darkness; but almost before she had got beyond the last echoes of the Salem meeting, that shadow of darker woe and misery than any the poor mother wist of, was again by Mrs. Vincent's side. CHAPTER XVII. "YOU are not able to walk so fast," said Mrs. Hilyard, coming up to the widow as she crossed over to the darker side of Grove Street, just where the house of the Miss Hemmings turned its lighted staircase-window to the street; "and it will not harm you to let me speak to you. Once you offered me your hand, and would have gone with me. It is a long long time ago--ages since--but I remember it. I do not come after you for nothing. Let me speak. You said you were a--a minister's wife, and knew human nature," she continued, with a certain pause of reverence, and at the same time a gleam of amusement, varying for a moment the blank and breathless voice in which she had spoken. "I want your advice."