her any good, but I can at least tell her that I am her old playfellow and that I love her still." Arriving at that institution, she was shown into the woman's apartment, and found there in a close, narrow cell the poor dove, smirched and stained by the sins of all with whom she had come in contact. She scarcely bore any resemblance to the idolized child who had only a few years before been the apple of a mother's eye. Here, too, she found a piece of work. The good matron came in and unlocked the door of the cells, allowing the women to come out and sit down while their visitor read to them from the word of God.

Oh, how hopeful was this new-found work to Marie. While here she forgot her own sorrow and was lost in the thought of rescuing others.

Hearing a sound in one of the cells, she asked the matron: "Is there any inmate who has not come out to sit with us?"

"Yes," replied the lady, "we have one woman who is such a terror to us that we never let her out."

"May I not see her?" asked Marie. And the two moved toward a cell occupied by a woman whose hair was white

as snow.

Mrs. Stocklaid reached her hand in through the bars and attempted to take that of the aged prisoner, who, at the familiarity of her visitor, drew herself up full height and said:

"Why, madam, what impudence on your part! I would have you know that I am no ordinary woman!" and with a genuine courtesy of "ye olden tymes," introduced herself, saying: "I am Mrs. Phil Cadukes, of aristocratic fame, and I do not wish common trash to call upon me, either."

A smile flitted over the countenance of Marie, then tears

sprang to her eyes as she turned from the cell and contemplated what it meant to be a lost soul with the sins of eighty years weighing one down. As she was about to leave she stepped into the office of the superintendent and gained permission to pay weekly visits to the institution that she might bring the gospel to the prisoners, both male and female, and point them to a better life. On her way homeward that day she drew a comparison between her life at this present time and that of a few years before. What a wonderful change had been wrought in her life! She laughed when she looked back to that old time and thought of herself, the petted, idolized doll of society, with no thought for human woes and no love for other than herself.

How grateful she felt toward Ruth, who had annoyed her with questions of reform and who had been the means of bringing her into such a place as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, where she could bestow her love and talent upon a people who were hungering and thirsting after a better life.

Once she would have scorned one like herself, but today she loves as the One who "came to seek and to save that which was lost." Who could say that she had not been born again? There was no uncertainty about the conversion of Marie Stocklaid, and the sweet spirit that had come to abide within her soul gave evidence of her new and higher life.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A WOMAN'S METHODS.

One might suppose as they have followed the trend of our story that Ruth Mansfield had climbed all the way up to thirty years without ever having had a serious thought of love or a tender impulse for any one of the sterner sex; but such was not the case, for if there was one thing that Ruth regarded with more sacredness than another, it was that Heaven-ordained institution, the home. She meant some day to have one and with it a husband of ideal manhood, one whom she could honor and one who would in turn feel equally honored to call her his wife. Of late this matter had been a subject of thought with her and was demanding her closest attention. She had begun to cast about to find, if she could, the counterpart of her existence. She had been looking around that she might judge of others' happiness something of the felicity of married life. As yet her research had not discovered a single case where she thought the conjugal relationship existing between two people exceeded her own state of single blessedness. To be sure, there was a measure of happiness which doubtless came from the harmony of two amiable spirits. But her ideal of marriage was where two souls could meet as one-two lives that could so harmoniously blend into each other that the very atmosphere could but tend to draw one Heavenward. In such an influence she felt that it would be an easy matter to build up the kingdom of home. Such a one she had not yet found, but on the contrary, her investigation had revealed to her the fact that almost every

home was in a state of fermentation and that oftener than otherwise husbands and wives lived in open broil with each other. She pondered this matter that was of so much importance to herself and began to search in earnest for the true reason of so much infelicity. As she thought it over her mind naturally began to reach out and search for the motive power that made people so inconsistent in their selection of an affinity. Here she stopped short, for she found that only one-half of the people had been making any choice at all, and that half was the male portion of society who made their selection of a wife from the head rather than from the heart. What an incongruous state of existence! Was it indeed true that woman was so inconsistently indifferent to her happiness through life that she had no choice in her mate? And then she began to count the scores of her girl friends who had started out in life together with herself. All were married, or had been. Was any of them mated? And if they were mated, what was the reason that they were so restless and beat their fettered spirits so against the chains that bound them in wedlock? She held in her hand the statistics showing eighteen hundred and forty divorces were granted in California during the previous year. What an awful showing for society! These statistics showed that eighteen hundred and forty homes were broken up probably every year in the Golden State! Ruth arose from her chair and paced up and down the room. This room was prettily arranged and all done by Ruth's own hand. Tenderly caressing the various objects as she passed, she said to them as if addressing living creatures: "Ruth Mansfield will never marry until she can make her own choice of a husband."

It was a beautiful morning and her door stood open to let in the bright sunlight of Heaven. As the words fell