"I don't mind that so much," said Calista, to whose New England ideas three hundred dollars seemed a much larger sum than it did to Richard; "but it is so dreadful to think that your father is angry with you. Perhaps if you were to go and see him—" "I am not sure but it would be a good plan," said Richard, thoughtfully. "If I could see him alone, I dare say I could bring him round; but there is Priscilla." "Perhaps you might, bring her round too." "You don't know her, Calista. Priscilla used to be a pretty nice girl when she was young, but she always loved money, and now I think she cares for nothing else. If you had only been rich, she would have thought it was all right." "Still, if you were to go there," urged Calista. "I would stay here, you know, till you came back; I might even take the school again." "Take the school indeed! Don't let me hear of such a thing!" The time came when Calista was only too glad to take the school again. Richard fully intended to go home, see his father, and "make all right," as he said; that is, get his own way, as he had done twenty times before, by dint of coaxing. But several things happened to prevent him. He had a slight accident while riding, which lamed him for two or three weeks; then Calista was very unwell, and he could not think of leaving her; and then winter set in, and he persuaded himself it would be as well to wait till spring. Meantime the war of 1812 broke out. The war fever ran very high in that part of the country. Richard fell in with it, as he did with everything that was going. He raised a company by his own exertions, and took command of it. He was soon ordered west, and bade a tender farewell to his wife, whom he commended, in an earnest and dutiful letter, to his father's care and affection. At Calista's earnest request, he also wrote a kind letter to his sister, and enclosed both in one envelope. Whether these letters reached their destination, Richard never knew. His company was engaged in the disastrous affair of the river Raisin, and not a man escaped the horrible massacre which followed. His little girl, born three months after her father's death, was motherless as well as fatherless when she was five years old. The old couple who had stood in the place of parents to Calista Folsom were both dead, and her poor child, with no near friends, was left on the hands of distant cousins, who had, or thought they had, enough to do to take care of their own families. What was to be done? "I am just going to write to her father's family," said Mrs. Tom Folsom, at whose house poor Mrs. Richard Stanfield died. "I would like to keep the child myself, for she is a dear little thing as ever I saw, but I seem to have my hands full already." "I suppose we might all say that," said Mrs. John Folsom. "But what is our Christianity worth, my dear Sophronia, if it does not lead us to the exercise of practical self-denial?"