Therefore must I ask you to turn aside with me for a moment to look again on Sally Wanless, when she reappears from her seclusion--a shame mother, with a babe born to sorrow and shame in her arms. I have said reappears, but she has not yet ventured to meet the, to her, scathing gaze of the people in the village street. She steals into the little garden behind her father's cottage, and there, in the soft September afternoons, you would find her seated beneath the shade of an old apple tree, face to face with her doom, and looking at it as one who has no hope. In some people the soul wakes late; some, indeed, appear to pass through the world without its ever awakening. They may be bright-hearted people, full of animal life and spirits, capable of much work and a few sacrifices, yet they have never risen up to full consciousness of the meaning of life, to its higher impulses, and its terrible risks and obligations. No great inward commotion has ever visited them; they vegetate tamely on till they reach the grave. Others, like Thomas Wanless, awake early to consciousness of the mystery and burden of existence, and battle with hopes and fears their lives long. Would that his daughter had also found the realities of living ere the curse of life had come upon her! But she did not. Her awakening came too late. While it was possible she hid from herself the meaning of her fall, and refused to look at the awful questions which for the first time surged in upon her soul. It was not possible for long. When the wail of her infant first broke on her ear she awoke and was stricken with the full consciousness of what she had lost. Her past life stood out before her as something apart; its hopes belonged to another state of existence, to a life in which her future could have no part. All lonely at the heart she had borne the pains of motherhood, and a feeble infant lay by her side bearing witness against her now and evermore. No father welcomed it. The sound of its feeble cry brought a forsakenness about the mother's heart nothing could remove. In vain her mother soothed her. In vain her true-hearted father, bravely hiding away his shame and grief, took the little one in his arms and fondled it with a fatherhood that assumed all the sin and all the responsibilities of his child. Sarah could not be comforted. Blank despair took possession of her. Why was she not dead? Why did the child live? Surely they would be both better dead and buried out of sight for ever? This was the under tone of her thoughts now, save when at times, and as she grew strong again, gusts of passion like her father's would sweep over her soul. Then she felt for moments as if she could compel the world to stop and witness her revenge. Should a fit like this master her, what might one so desperate not do? Hers was a soul awake and in prison, but if it burst its bonds?