The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-12-22
CHAPTER II.
IN TINE OF TROUBLE.

IN TIME OF TROUBLE.
Andrew Walters house pleasantly over
looked the town, both house and inmates being
happily lifted above their neighbors' spite and
unfriendliness. Though-not to be too hard
upon the town-we will bear in mind that it
it is not always the people who say the un-
kindest words who do the unkindest deeds,
and will hope that East Wy keham, too, should
Andrew Walter ever have to ask it for bread,
will at least not give him stone.
If, as the winter day closed in, the reader
could have walked up the well-kept gravelled
path, defended by choice shrubs, and could
have stood at the bright window, whose panes
flashed beneath the freight, this is what he
would have seen inside as snug a room as he
could wish to look upon.
First, man somewhat past the middle age,
well knit and sinewy, with a face kindly and
pleasant. though not without lines of care, and
at present full of perplexity. He sits with his
elbow on his knee, and his chin upon his
hand, looking steadily into the fire, in which
he does not seem to read any clear answer to
the question he is asking. This is Andrew
Waller.
Next, girl of about eighteen, but looking
older and as if premature responsibility had
sobered her merry face. She sits at table
which is covered with evergreens, and is busy
stitching ivy leaves on strips of cardboard
which III a little while will be shaped into
letters. This is Maggie, Andrews eldest
daughter.
Next, another girl, some four years younger,
wonderfully like her sister, but more like her
father. She, too, is busy constructing, with
wire and string to help, long rope or ropes
Of leafy green. This is Edith, the second
daughter.
Last, the Mite; as Andrew often calls her,
sadly, the widower's mite She is Wee
maiden of only six years old, but persuades
herself she, too, is usefully busy, with needle
and thread, making necklace of the scarlet
holly y-berries. Her name is Lucy.
The girls, it is TO be noticed, are all in black,
seemingly of the newest and deepest; and
there seems to be but little speaking amongst
them.
One could not look upon the man without
feeling that he was man of strong passions
and affections; nor on the girls without feeling
they were all IN all to each other and to him.
Until within the last year the current of his
lite had flowed smoothly and prosperously.
He had had bat one great sorrow-the loss OF
his wife; and that sorrow having befallen him
when his little maid was born, had been soft
ened by time, though not (and not to bs) for
gotten. Now, however, he was indeed in
troubled waters. That towns talk about
money matters and an impracticable mort
gagee was in the main correct. He had, in
one way or other, lost nearly all he had. And
at his time OF llfe IL was hard TO nave TO devise
plans OF keeping the wolf from the door. All
kinds of peouniary loss, loss of position, loss
of comforts and luXuries, were, nevertheless,
but deprivations of things he might hope to
win back again; or failing that, he could face
the want of them with manly fortitude and
resignation.
The one loss to which he could not bring
himself to be submissive (being loss OF that
which no strength of arm or activity of brain
could ever bring him back again) was the
loss of his boy. The sea, indeed, shall give
up its Dead he said to himself 'but not
to me-.
He took from his pooket-book and read once
more the account, cut out from a Calcutta
newspaper, of the great catastrophe in the
Hooghly which had bereaved him. 1t gave, as
far as was known, the names of all vessels
lost, with the port to which they belonged, the
captains name, and brief description OF the
nature Of the damage in each case. The entry
in which ha w tod rad thua