On their return, their house was ready for their reception, or at least so that they could live in it while the other part was finished.

Hannah had frequently been surprised by her husband’s frequent potations of brandy during their journey, and his whole bearing had been haughty and reserved.

They had been at home but a short time, when, after being absent one night and day, Mr. Benson returned home with a dark frown resting upon his countenance; he slammed the door, kicked every chair that came in his way, and stamping about, went and dismissed all his hands, took another dram from his brandy bottle, and sat moodily down by the fire, grumbling because supper was not on the table.

Poor Hannah pressed her hand upon her throbbing heart, and struggled with the tears that rose to her eyes and seemed scalding her very eye balls with their burning heat.  There was a choking sensation in her throat, but she swallowed it back, and prepared supper in the best manner she was capable.  Her husband seated himself at the table, took a biscuit, looked at it, flung it back upon the plate, called his tea dish water, and throwing back his chair hastily, left the table.

But why dwell upon the sorrowful years they spent together?  He ever came like a dark shadow upon the sunlight of home.  Children gathered around their fire side, but there was no gentle corner for them in his heart.

His only son was ever with him like his shadow, drinking in his precepts, practising his examples, breathing his oaths, domineering over his mother and sisters, and a terror to the neighborhood.

His father telling him, he was in hopes to see the time he would dance on Dr. Somers’ grave, as he hated him with a perfect hatred, because he had been his wife’s attending physician, when she had been sick during the years they had lived together.

James, for such was the name of the son, was instructed to hate everybody that came in his way, and, of course, was hated by every one.

The money that came by gambling, went in the same way, and poverty—­abject poverty—­was now an inmate of their dwelling.

The house remained unfinished; the frame, which had never been clap-boarded, had gone to decay in a great measure; and when one meal was obtained, they scarcely knew where another would come from.

Discord reigned among them.  Hannah was a wreck of her former self.  She had strung up her patience to its utmost tension, and would often bear the scorn and abuse of her husband in sorrowful silence.

But this state of things passed away, and when her children shared in her sufferings, the bitter waters were stirred in their deep fountains, and she became a worn woman, with a hasty spirit.  The biting retort was now often upon her lips, and she became in a true sense of the word, what might well be called a scold.

One gloomy fall day, when the sighing winds shook the mellow apples from the trees in the large thrifty orchard, that stood before the house, casting so deep a shade that the rays of the sun could scarcely penetrate it, and the old house looked blacker for the rain that had fallen upon it, Mr. Benson was seized for debt, and, conveyed to jail.