CRUEL REPROACHES.

"Well, what is all this about?"

Mrs. Holt dropped the hands from her face, and looked toward the door, where a tall, well-formed man stood frowning, with a soft hat grasped hard in one hand, as if the sight of his wife's trouble had angered him.

"Is it you, Holt? I did not expect you so early," she said, making an effort to appear pleased.

He looked at her keenly, and spoke in a slight, questioning voice, "Crying again!"

"No, no, I have not shed a tear. That does not often happen to me now."

Holt gave her another sharp glance, flung his hat on a table, and sat down in the easy-chair that his wife had just left.

"So you have got at this old thing again," he said. "Confound it, here's a needle half run through my hand. What have you been about. Darning the ragged silk? Just like you. I have half a mind to pitch the old hencoop into the street."

The lady did not speak; but this rudeness seemed to shock her, for the muscles about her mouth were strained, and she walked nervously around the room, moving things backward and forward in a helpless way.

"Well, never mind the needle, though it was confoundedly careless. I'm glad you are not drooping and moaning after the old fashion just now, for I want you to help me again. Don't look white, and wince so—it is nothing very dreadful; but I want fifty—say a hundred dollars, and don't know where else to come for it. You can get it, if you will."

"A hundred dollars!" faltered the poor woman, with a shock of inward cold. "Mason, you know I have not got it."

"I know that you are a dear, kind old party, and that you always manage to help me out of my scrapes somehow. I can always trust in you when everybody else fails."

"But, Mason, I haven't got a dollar in the world."

"Well, what of that? You can borrow."

"Borrow? No, I cannot do that. Since we needed friends, they have all dropped away."

"But you must look them up. I tell you I'm awfully in for it—owe everybody, to say nothing of this old cat, Wheeler."

"But this hundred dollars, if I had it, would not pay half that you have told me of."

"Certainly not; but it would take me out of the crowd and give me a new start. The long and short of it is, I must go. There are chances out West, and I mean to take some of them. It's of no use staying here. You always could get along better without me, when the duns were upon us."

Mrs. Holt sat down in the nearest chair, simply because she had no strength to stand, her withered face turned white as parchment, her lips contracted painfully; she felt as if the last blow fate had to give was falling upon her then.

"Are you going to leave me?"

"To leave you? One would think it a terrible misfortune. Why, you have told me a thousand times that——"

"Oh, don't! I cannot bear it now. If we are to part, let it be in peace," cried the poor wife out of the depths of her anguish. "Remember, it may be forever!"

"In the course of nature, that is very probable," answered the man, who had sworn a thousand times that the woman before him never could grow old. "Is there anything so very heart-breaking about my going, that it makes you sit choking and panting like a frog out of water. I can remember when you had more vim."

"Can you?" she questioned, drearily. "Yes, I dare say; but I am old now."

"Old! I like that. You own up to it at last. Old! Of course, you are, and infernally nagging, too, if things don't go to please you."

"I do not intend to be unkind or disagreeable, Mason, but you should make allowances sometimes. When one is very unhappy, it is hard always to appear cheerful. I—I am so miserable."

"You need not go over that old song; I've heard it croaked till it makes me sick. Do try and look less like a confounded mummy, and get the whine out of your throat There, now, begin to shiver and grow moist about the eyes. Hang it, don't you know that you are an infernal sight too old for that dodge. It used to tell on me wonderfully when I was spooney, and you younger, but now——"

The man made a gesture of contempt with his hand, as if he wished to sweep away all her pretensions at once, and settle her down into the miserable old woman which he had made her, more certainly than time itself.

"How about the money?" he added, in the tone of an injured creditor. "I must have enough to carry me west of the Mississippi."

"But I have no money!" she answered him, in a burst of sharp impatience. "How am I to get it?"

Holt laughed, took a soiled handkerchief from his hat and wiped his flushed face.

"Come, come—no more lies, old lady! Where did you get the money to pay Mrs. Wheeler with? Not a cent this morning, and fifty dollars the next hour. I could hardly keep the widow from embracing me when I came up-stairs, spite of the brandy in my breath, as she calls it—hang her impudence! What does she know about a gentleman's tod. But I take such things gracefully. Didn't know what she was driving at for ten minutes; but accepted the situation, and swallowed all thanks for the fifty dollars I had left for her; told her not to say another word; was glad if my promptness had relieved her from any embarrassment, spread my hands once or twice in delicate refusal of so much gratitude, and come up hereto find out just how flush you are."

"I have told you—I have told you," pleaded the woman.

"Stuff and nonsense! You have not left the house; and no human being but a miserable little match-girl has been here since I went out—you see I have taken a little pains to inform myself. How just be up to the truth once, and tell me where the hoard is."

"I tell you, upon my honor, I have not a cent in the world," answered the harassed woman—"not one."

"On your honor! How I like that."

"I will take an oath if you cannot believe me."

"But where did you get that money?"

"I—I borrowed it of the little match-girl."

Holt crushed his hat between both hands, and then flung it half way to the ceiling, distorting himself with a burst of laughter, so deep and genuine that his wife smiled in spite of all the anguish at her heart.

"Borrowed it of the match-girl? Mark Anthony, this is too much; and she wishes me to believe it. Ho! ho! ha! ha!"

"I know it seems strange and incredible, but Rhoda Weeks lent me that money as certainly as you and I live," she said, with a calm seriousness that almost took away his breath.

"And has she got any more, that is the principal thing now?" said Holt, catching his hat and crushing it impatiently, for he was too much in earnest for continued mirth. "I do not ask where the imp gets such sums of money—that's none of my business; but has she got any more stamps that you can get hold of?"

"I do not think that she has got another dollar in the world, Mason. In fact, I know that this was all she had."

Holt's laugh hardened down to a sneer now, for he was convinced that she spoke the truth; and his hopes of money faded rapidly—at any rate, from that quarter.

"And so you have taken to financiering among the match-girls and boot-blacks. Of course, the noble blood that we boast of does not fire up at the idea. Pride and poverty have given up fighting, ha!"

"I did not ask the child for her money, and would not have taken it if—"

"If you hadn't wanted it to throw away on that ugly dun down stairs. Why, woman, that money would have taken me out West."

"But where is it you wish to go, Mason?"

"On to the Pacific railroad—I don't much care which route. I have patches of land in both directions."

"You have land?"

"Yes, I have; ventures made in the old prosperous days, that may come into market now. Who knows, this black luck may not last forever. I should have sold it fifty times over if anybody would have bought it."

"And you are going West to stay, to live? Oh, Mason! take me with you!"

"Take you with me? Well, old girl, on one condition I will. Raise me money enough to go out, and I'll send for you."

"Send for me? No, no! I must not be left behind. It would kill me. Besides, how could I live? How could I live?"

The poor woman began to tremble, and writhe visibly before her husband's eyes. He was not naturally a hard-hearted man, and for the moment took compassion on her.

"Don't tremble so, old girl—why should you?" he said, with a gleam of loving kindness. "I'll go out, you know, and see how the land lies. If it promises well, what do you say to a log-cabin on the edge of some prairie, or at the foot of a hill, with a stream in sight? If we could get clear away from the world, that would be the very best thing we could do. I worked in the woods once a whole winter, and that, compared to raising corn on a prairie where the black soil is rich six feet deep, is mere baby's play."

"Oh! If I were but a few years younger," she said piteously, "then a log-house with you, and away from the whole world, would be heaven."

Holt laughed, and coming toward her, leaned upon her chair in an old, familiar attitude, which made her heart swell. He saw the crimson of an almost uncontrollable emotion sweep slowly up to her face, and began to play with a tiny curl that fell over her forehead. She started up, went to the window, and he could see by the motion of her head and shoulders that she was crying bitterly.

"Come, come," he said, "there is nothing to cry about. It is always wrath or tears when I am alone with you, though, I must say, tears have been scarce with you of late. Why, you are getting to be childish."

"The second childhood!" she answered, smiling bitterly through her tears.

"What nonsense; but let us talk seriously about the money. Can you get it for me?"

"God help me! I do not know how," she answered.

"Could you not get it from the young lord?"

"The young lord. You mean my son? Oh Mason! I have been such a burden to him already."

"But he would give it to you?"

"If he had it. Yes, I do not doubt that; but I would almost rather die than ask him."

"But you will do it for my sake?"

"For your sake, Mason, I would do anything."

She looked into his face, her own quivered all over; her eyes, blue as the heavens once, took back a gleam of youth. He stooped down and kissed her.

"Then, for my sake, ask him. I will turn over a new leaf in this far West. Don't remember the last few years—I have not been altogether myself. Come, help me this time. We will make a fresh start, then, and build up a real home for ourselves."

"Oh! that we could, on the prairie, in the wilderness—anywhere, so long as it was a home, and our own," she cried, reaching out her arms like a weary child. "In this life we are so far apart, Mason."

"I know it—I am sorry now."

"Are you, my husband?"

"Indeed, I am. Only help me out of this abominable nest of duns, and you will find the old nature coming back. Say, now, will you ask William about it?"

"I—I will get the money. Depend on me, I will!"

"I always could trust you to work out possibilities; and sometimes, it seems to me, impossibilities. After all, there are few women like you."

She smiled pleasantly in his face. His praise seemed to take off ten years from her life.

"Yes, you will do it, I see that," he said, smoothing her hair. "Who says you are growing old? Not I, for one."

"Then I shall go with you?" she questioned, anxiously.

"No, not _with_ me. I will go first and prepare some sort of a home for you; then you shall come out, and we will settle down and grow into nice old people."

"But you _will_ do this?"

"Indeed, I will. Only help me out of this heap of brownstone and bricks, and you shall be the better for it all your life."

She threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him with pathetic tenderness.

"I will get it! Never fear, I will get it."

For a moment she was strained to his heart fervently, as in the first days of their marriage; then he snatched up his hat and went away, perhaps ashamed that so much good was left in him.