It is a very quiet subdued sort of night. A solemn stillness broods over the attic room where the bereaved trio are gathered. It is August again, and two of the group recall a bitter evening one August, long ago, when the pitiless rain cast them shelterless into the street—and their grateful hearts dwell upon the peace and comfort that resulted from that one, apparently adverse, providence.

The other member of the little circle dwells upon the single kind act that made his subsequent good fortune. There is no doubt in either mind of the especial guardianship of an Almighty power. Every little blessing, every happy consequence from what, at first, seemed an evil, is plainly before them, and the review of the few past years is working out a settled confidence in the over-ruling Hand.

Mrs. Bates thinks of the hours of heaviness when, a poor huckster woman, she trudged wearily along with her loaded basket, and of the many times she sought the miserable cellar without a morsel of bread for her famishing children, and her heart clings fondly to the memory of the real friend who wrought so glorious a change in her condition. Nannie goes back to the pinched and pallid infant in the darkened room, and the days and weeks of sadness spent away from the light and air, and she comes again to the happy home, and the angel sister, and the lovely little Dora—and a tear moistens her eye as she feels that the kind heart that has so long imparted to their life its purest pleasures has forever ceased to beat. Pat is more occupied with the bright present than with past ills. The vile place where he once groveled is erased from his mind by the hallowed sanctuary that is now his Christian home, and the blessed consciousness that Nannie Bates is his, now and forever, banishes every feeling of sadness, leaving room for no regrets save the one that Mr. Bond is hidden from them, to be seen no more on earth.

Pat has acquired such an universal benevolence since Nannie is so fast bound unto him, that even Mike Dugan is welcomed into their little circle with a true cordiality.

Mike is not alone, however, when he comes to sit an hour with his old friend, Nannie; but is accompanied by the blushing Helen Dhue whom he calls "my wife."