In the course of time, however, when the evidences of struggle succeeded those of comfort and independence, the world began to perceive the just judgments of God as manifested in the disasters which befel them, and which seemed to visit them as with a judicial punishment.

Year after year, as they sank in the scale of poverty, did the almost forgotten murder assume a more prominent and distinct shape in the public mind, until at length it became too certain to be doubted, that the slow but sure finger of God's justice was laid upon them as an additional proof that crime, however it may escape the laws of men, cannot veil itself from the all-seeing eye of the Almighty.
There was, however, an individual member of the family, whose piety and many virtues excited a sympathy in her behalf, as general as it was deep and compassionate.

This was Mrs.Dalton, towards whom only one universal impression of good-will, affection, and respect prevailed.

Indeed, it might be said that the whole family were popular in the country; but, notwithstanding their respectability, both individually and collectively, the shadow of crime was upon them; and as long as the people saw that everything they put their hand to failed, and that a curse seemed to pursue them, as if in attestation of the hidden murder, so long did the feeling that God would yet vindicate His justice by their more signal punishment, operate with dreadful force against them, with the single exception we have mentioned.
Mrs.Dalton, on her return home from her unsuccessful visit to the miser's, found her family in the same state of grievous privation in which she had left them.

'Tis true she had not mentioned to any of them her intention of appealing to the gratitude or humanity of Skinadre; yet they knew, by an intuitive perception of her purpose, that she had gone to him, and although their pride would not allow them to ask a favor directly from him, yet they felt pleased that she had made the experiment, and had little doubt that the miser, by obliging her in the request she went to prefer, would gladly avail himself of the circumstance to regain their good will, not so much on their own account, as for the sake of standing well in the world, in whose opinion he knew he had suffered by his treachery towards them in the matter of their farm.