Valentine, no longer distressed for or by his master, divided his attention between the manifold light duties that occupied him all day at Red Hill, and the evenings spent in assisting Fannie in her business behind the counter of Leroux's shop, and for which he now received a regular payment, in consideration of the fact that he stood at the post and performed the duties of Monsieur Leroux, whose age obliged him to leave the shop at an early hour of the evening, just as the custom was beginning to grow brisk. Thus they were enabled to add many little comforts to their humble home, and also to lay up a trifle against the chance of darker days. Every alternate Sabbath they attended meeting together at Magnolia Grove, and afterward dined with Phædra at Red Hill, and went home at night; and, on the intervening Sabbath, when there was no service at the Grove Mission, Phædra would come into town and go to church with the children at the Bethel (colored) Mission of M----, and afterward take dinner with them, before returning home in the evening. Thus passed the halcyon days of spring, preceding the awful moral storm which ended in that "household wreck." CHAPTER VI. PROPHETIC. The look, the air that frets thy sight, May be a token that below, The soul has closed in deadly fight With some eternal fiery foe, Whose glance would scorch thy smiling grace, And cast thee, shuddering, on thy face. Spring in the South is a season of the most enchanting beauty. Forests of odoriferous, blossoming trees, thickets of sweet-scented shrubs, and fields of fragrant wild flowers fill the atmosphere with their delicious perfume; climbing vines twine around the trees and overgrow the fences, transforming them into arbors and to hedges of flowering plants of matchless bloom and fragrance; while myriads of bright-winged birds enliven all the sunny air with their glad melody. It is a season and a scene no lover of nature could look upon without rapture. But the summer, with its advanced luxuriance of beauty, too often brings malaria, pestilence and death. The promise of the spring to one in Valentine's condition had been too fair to last for any length of time. Clouds began to gather over his head. First, as Mr. Waring went no longer to town to spend his evenings, it followed as a matter of course that he frequently required Valentine's services at that hour at home. On inquiring for his servant upon these occasions, and receiving the answer that Valentine had gone to town to see his wife, he would grow angry, and exclaim, with an oath: "I have never had any good of that boy since his foolish marriage. In town every night! This thing is getting to be insufferable, and shall be stopped." And one morning, when Valentine returned, Mr. Waring told him that he was not to take himself off to see his wife every evening, but that in future he must ask permission to do so.