I used to hear horrid stories, when I was a boy, about how she drove them out of the house; and she was cruel to her son too, and drove him away from home.

Of course, I am sorry to be the instrument of punishing her, and I do have a certain pity for the old woman; but it is really her own fault.

She might be living now in comfort with her son, perhaps, if she had treated him well." "We can't go by such 'ifs' in this world, Steve," said Mercy, earnestly.
"We have to take things as they are.

I don't want to be judged way back in my life.

Only God knows all the 'ifs.'" Such conversations as these had prepared Mercy for the news which Stephen now wrote her; but they had in no wise changed her feeling in regard to it.