't think of me, my dear,' he said, giving her his kind permission
fully. 'Come back by all means.'

He seemed to be dozing when she returned, and she put the low fire
together very softly lest she should awake him. But he overheard her,
and called out who was that?

'Only Amy, father.'

'Amy, my child, come here. I want to say a word to you.' He raised
himself a little in his low bed, as she kneeled beside it to bring her
face near him; and put his hand between hers. O! Both the private father
and the Father of the Marshalsea were strong within him then.

'My love, you have had a life of hardship here. No companions, no
recreations, many cares I am afraid?'

'Don't think of that, dear. I never do.'

'You know my position, Amy. I have not been able to do much for you; but
all I have been able to do, I have done.'

'Yes, my dear father,' she rejoined, kissing him. 'I know, I know.'

'I am in the twenty-third year of my life here,' he said, with a catch
in his breath that was not so much a sob as an irrepressible sound of
self-approval, the momentary outburst of a noble consciousness. 'It is
all I could do for my children--I have done it. Amy, my love, you are
by far the best loved of the three; I have had you principally in my
mind--whatever I have done for your sake, my dear child, I have done
freely and without murmuring.'

Only the wisdom that holds the clue to all hearts and all mysteries, can
surely know to what extent a man, especially a man brought down as this
man had been, can impose upon himself. Enough, for the present place,
that he lay down with wet eyelashes, serene, in a manner majestic, after
bestowing his life of degradation as a sort of portion on the devoted
child upon whom its miseries had fallen so heavily, and whose love alone
had saved him to be even what he was.

That child had no doubts, asked herself no question, for she was but too
content to see him with a lustre round his head. Poor dear, good dear,
truest, kindest, dearest, were the only words she had for him, as she
hushed him to rest.

She never left him all that night. As if she had done him a wrong which
her tenderness could hardly repair, she sat by him in his sleep, at
times softly kissing him with suspended breath, and calling him in a
whisper by some endearing name. At times she stood aside so as not to
intercept the low fire-light, and, watching him when it fell upon his
sleeping face, wondered did he look now at all as