The rented farm upon which Foster went with his family, after being sold out, was cultivated with no more industry than his own had been of late years. The man had lost all ambition, and was yielding himself a slave to the all-degrading appetite for drink. At first, his wife opposed a gentle remonstrance; but he became impatient and angry at a word, and she shrank back into herself, choosing rather to bear silently the ills of poverty and degradation, which she saw were rapidly approaching, than to run the risk of having unkindness, from one so tenderly loved, added thereto. Affliction came with trouble. Death took from the mother's arms, in a single year, three children. The loss of one was accompanied by a most painful, yet deeply warning circumstance. The father came home from the village one evening, after having taken a larger quantity of liquor than usual. While the mother was preparing supper, he took the babe that lay fretting in the cradle, and hushed its frettings in his arms. While holding it, overcome with what he had been drinking, he fell asleep, and the infant rolled upon the floor, striking its head first. It awoke and screamed for a minute or two, and then sank into a heavy slumber, and did not awake until the next morning. Then it was so sick, that a physician had to be called. In a week it died of brain fever, occasioned, the doctor said, by the fall. For a whole month not a drop of liquor passed the lips of the rebuked and penitent father. Even in that short time the desert places of home began to put forth leaves, and to give promise of sweet buds and blossoms; and the grieving mother felt that out of this great sorrow was to come forth joy. Alas! that even a hope so full of sadness should be doomed to disappointment. In a moment of temptation her husband fell, and fell into a lower deep. Then, with more rapid steps the downward road was traversed. Five more years of sorrow sufficed to do the work of suffering and degradation. There was another seizure for debt, and the remnant of stock, with nearly all their furniture, was taken and sold. The rented farm had to be given up; with this, the hope of gaining even sufficient food for her little ones died in the wretched mother's mind. From a farmer on his own account, Foster now became a mere farm labourer; with wages sufficient, however, to have made things comfortable at home under the management of his frugal, industrious wife, if all he earned had been brought home to her. But at least one third, and finally one half, and sometimes more, went to swell the gain of the tavern-keeper. Had it not been that a cow and a few chickens were left to them at the last seizure of their things, pinching hunger would have entered the comfortless home where the mother hid herself with her children.