have killed this child, and now I am killing you!
I swear by heaven, I will give it up!" Yet, like a thief, that night
He stole to the shop and worked; his brow all wet with a clammy dew.

I cannot tell how I lived that week, my little boy and I,
Too proud to beg; too weak to work; and the weather cold and wild.
I can only think of one dark night when the rain poured from the sky,
And the wind went wailing round the house, like the ghost of my buried
child.

Joe still toiled in the little shop. Somebody clicked the gate;
A neighbor-lad brought in the mail and laid it on the floor,
But I sat half-stunned by my heavy grief crouched over the empty grate,
Till I heard--the crack of a pistol-shot; and I sprang to the workshop
door.

That door was locked and the bolt shut fast. I could not cry, nor speak,
But I snatched my boy from the corner there, sick with a sudden dread,
And carried him out through the garden plot, forgetting my arms were weak,
Forgetting the rainy torrent that beat on my bare young head;

The front door yielded to my touch. I staggered faintly in,
Fearing--_what_? He stood unharmed, though the wall showed a
jagged hole.
In his trembling hand, his aim had failed, and the great and deadly sin
Of his own life's blood was not yet laid on the poor man's tortured soul.

But the pistol held another charge, I knew; and like something mad
I shook my fist in my poor man's face, and shrieked at him, fierce and
wild,
"How can you dare to rob us so?"--and I seized the little lad;
"How can you dare to rob your wife and your little helpless child?"

All of a sudden, he bowed his head, while from his nerveless hand
That hung so limp, I almost feared to see the pistol fall.
"Maggie," he said in a low, low voice, "you see me as I stand
A hopeless man. My plan has failed. That letter tells you all."

Then for a moment the house was still as ever the house of death;
Only the drip of the rain outside, for the storm was almost o'er;
But no;--there followed another sound, and I started, caught my breath;
As a stalwart man with a heavy step came in at the open door.

I shall always think him an angel sent from heaven in a human guise;
He must have guessed our awful state; he couldn't help but see
There was something wrong; but never a word, never a look in his eyes
Told what he thought, as in kindly way he talked to Joe and me.

He was come fro