CHAPTER XIII.
IT is nine years since Mrs.Howland looked her last look on her wayward, wandering boy, and eight years since any tidings came from him to bless her yearning heart.

She appears older by almost twenty years, and moves about with a quiet drooping air, as if her heart were releasing itself from its hold on earthly objects, and reaching out its tendrils for a higher and surer support.

With the exception of Martha, the youngest, all her children have given her trouble.
Scarcely one of the sweet hopes cherished by her heart, when they first lay in helpless innocence upon her bosom, have been realized.
Disappointment--disappointment--has come at almost every step of her married life.

The iron hand of her husband has crushed almost every thing.

Ah! how often and often, as she breathed the chilling air of her own household, where all was constrained propriety, would her heart go back to the sunny home in which were passed the happy days of girlhood, and wish that something of the wisdom and gentleness that marked her father's intercourse with his children could be transferred to her uncompromising husband.