THE COLLEGE CHUMS. CHAPTER I. UPON Milly, too, the loss of her mother fell with a blow for a time not less overwhelming ; but her grief was less lasting, and as the year of mourning wore on to its close, she had regained much of her wonted joyousness. In the home of her happy and unclouded childhood she was now ripening into womanhood; life to her was in its spring time, and the bright sun of early and innocent existence gilded her path with the rays of hope. Her happiness had been unalloyed-without taint and unsullied-the course of her life unchafed by rude contact with the world. One dark spot alone appeared, caused by the death of her mother, but even this only served to bind her more closely to the parent that survived; innocent and guileless, her heart bounded with joy and gladness; devoted attachment to her father, and a love of all beautiful things in nature, were its pure affections. The caged birds sang sweeter when they heard her voice; the stately and demure Newfoundland dog bounded to meet her light step and look up in her smiling face and laughing eyes, and the sleek tenants of the stable neighed their recognition of the win ning witchery that hung around this lovely creature. Such was the being who was destined to enter upon life, deprived of a mother's care at the time when fostering watchfulness was most needed. She was too simple minded, too guileless, to endure and bear up singlehanded and unsupported, against the chafes and rubs which are met with in our struggles with the world; and although her father was not insensible to this, and at times felt the danger to which she would be exposed, he contemplated with horror any attempt on his part to awaken in her a sense of the sin and depravity which existed in the world; he would never tear the veil from her eyes, and relying upon the hope that she would never be exposed to temptation, he believed (too common and often too fatal an error) that the absence of its snares was the best protection. Short-sighted and dangerous as his view of this subject in |