The Story of a Hangwoman poverty, lived with difficulty by the labor of her hands, and privation seemed to act like frost on her soul, chilling and freezing the fount of kindliness that springs in every human heart. In truth an unlovable creature, when allowances are made for circumstances. The boy was lively and warm-hearted, full of merry, affectionate ways, winding him self round his mother's heart and re turning her love with interest, the one bright spot in her obscure, monotonous life. Then, as now, the tide of emigra tion flowed westward, but America seemed vastly further off. Before the boy's imagination it fluttered, a shim mering phantom, like the magic isle of the blest that shines in the midst of the sunset off the coast of Arran—a country full of riches, with virgin soil that gave abundantly on the smallest cultivation, an El Dorado where fortunes were to be had for the taking, a land where willing hands could make their way, a land of sunshine, of marvels. So old men said whose sons had prospered beyond the seas. He saw American letters at inter vals bring good store of money to aid his neighbors, his mother said money was all one needed to be happy, and he resolved to seek it where, by all ac counts, it was to be found. The idea became fixed and matured in his mind as he approached manhood. Gradually he won Betty to his way of thinking. Though it wrung her heart to let him go, she agreed that there was no open ing for him at home, nor hope of for tune, so it came to pass that he stood one morning at the cross roads, pockets empty, courage high, with a group of intending emigrants, while his mother, choking with tearless grief, hung round his neck as if she could not let him go, strained him in a last passionate em brace, then turning without once look ing back, ran blindly to her lonely cabin,
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locked the door, and flung herself down by the fireless, desolate hearth, in an agony of grief. This was, I should think, a few years after the Declaration of Independence. The mother did not hear from him for months, then a letter reached her. He was safe, liked the new country, and was doing well. He wrote at intervals, always giving good accounts of his pros pects and seeking to cheer her, sending her moreover all he could spare from his earnings, a blessed relief to her ceaseless toil. About two years passed, then he wrote saying he intended push ing West to a wild tract of country uncolonized by Europeans, where he ex pected to make his fortune. The climate was unhealthy, and the Indians were said to be hostile, but he did not fear them, and believed if one were kind and honest towards them, there was nothing to fear. Still, the undertaking was dangerous, but he risked his life to be able sooner or later to have her with him, and repay her for all her care and love. Such was the substance of the last letter she ever received from him. Whether he wrote others which never reached her, or fell a victim to the climate, to hard work or to Indian treachery, she did not know. Some times she thought bitterly, perhaps he lived, and had forgotten her, but to do her justice, she dismissed the idea. No! her boy would never act so. Again she broke into wild upbraidings against that Providence which had deprived her of her only comfort, but generally her mood was one of darkest gloom. The remittances from America failing, and her boy not being now at hand to help her as he used, she became poorer than ever, and at times scarcely earned enough to keep soul and body together. And thus the years passed; her dark hair turned grayish, the lines hardened
