ot wonder," he said.

"I am useless. My voice is dead."

"Useless to your friends? Tush, my little Emilia! Sandra mia! Don't you
know that while you love your friends that's all they want of you?"

"Oh!" she moaned; "the gas-lamp hurts me. What a noise there is!"

"We shall soon get away from the noise."

"No; I like it; but not the light. Oh, my feet!--why are you walking
still? What friends?"

"For instance, myself."

"You knew of my wandering about London! It makes me believe in heaven. I
can't bear to think of being unseen."

"This morning," said Merthyr, "I saw the policeman in whose house you
have been staying."

Emilia bowed her head to the mystery by which this friend was endowed to
be cognizant of her actions. "I feel that I have not seen the streets for
years. If it were not for you I should fall down.--Oh! do you understand
that my voice has quite gone?"

Merthyr perceived her anxiety to be that she might not betaken on
doubtful terms. "Your hand hasn't," he said, pressing it, and so
gratified her with a concrete image of something that she could still
bestow upon a friend. To this she clung while the noisy wheels bore her
through London, till her weak body failed to keep courage in her breast,
and she wept and came closer to Merthyr. He who supposed that her recent
despair and present tears were for the loss of her lover, gave happily
more comfort than he took. "When old gentlemen choose to interest
themselves about very young ladies," he called upon his humorous
philosophy to observe internally, as men do to forestall the possible
cynic external;--and the rest of the sentence was acted under his eyes by
the figures of three persons. But, there she was, lying within his arm,
rescued, the creature whom he had found filling his heart, when lost, and
whom he thought one of the most hopeful of the women of earth! He thanked
God for bare facts. She lay against him with her eyelids softly joined,
and as he felt the breathing of her body, he marvelled to think how
matter-of-fact they had both been on the brink of a tragedy, and how
naturally she had, as it were, argued herself up to the gates of death.
For want of what? "My sister may supply it," thought Merthyr.

"Oh! that river is like a great black snake with a sick eye, and will
come round me!" said Emilia, talking as from sleep; then started, with
fright in her face: "Oh! my hunger again!"

"Hunger!" said he, horrified.

"It comes worse than ev