Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/104

94 the pity of deserting so weak a creature entirely to the power of his own passions. But at last the youth cut the bond himself by tiring of the monotony of the farm life and leaving his uncle one night, taking what money he could find along with him.

A month after Henry got a letter from his sister denouncing him for his treatment of her boy.

"He has told me how you made his life a misery, reproaching him for his delicacy. And having the pride some of his family are without, he could no longer bear it. Without money, hungry, and in rags, he left you and came back to his mother."

By the same post he received a letter from Mollie.

"O Henry! the years will be so very short when we meet—so very few; come, come, come!"

After that there was a silence—a long silence of months. Henry grew restless; every evening he sat at his table reading over the old letters, wondering why Mollie never wrote. Had she grown tired of him? had some one else come between them? His heart burned at