than
commonly short-winded by the weight of the till, in which there had been
an inconvenient quantity of copper. Trotty, with the child beside him,
floated up the staircase like mere air.

"Follow her! Follow her! Follow her!" He heard the ghostly voices in
the Bells repeat their words as he ascended. "Learn it, from the
creature dearest to your heart!"

It was over. It was over. And this was she, her father's pride and joy!
This haggard, wretched woman, weeping by the bed, if it deserved that
name, and pressing to her breast, and hanging down her head upon, an
infant? Who can tell how spare, how sickly, and how poor an infant? Who
can tell how dear?

"Thank God!" cried Trotty, holding up his folded hands. "O, God be
thanked! She loves her child!"

Again Trotty heard the voices, saying, "Follow her!" He turned toward
his guide, and saw it rising from him, passing through the air. "Follow
her!" it said. And vanished.

He hovered round her; sat down at her feet; looked up into her face for
one trace of her old self; listened for one note of her old pleasant
voice. He flitted round the child: so wan, so prematurely old, so
dreadful in its gravity, so plaintive in its feeble, mournful, miserable
wail. He almost worshiped it. He clung to it as her only safeguard; as
the last unbroken link that bound her to endurance. He set his father's
hope and trust on the frail baby; watched her every look upon it as she
held it in her arms; and cried a thousand times, "She loves it! God be
thanked, she loves it!"

He saw the woman tend her in the night; return to her when her grudging
husband was asleep, and all was still; encourage her, shed tears with
her, set nourishment before her. He saw the day come, and the night
again; the day, the night; the time go by; the house of death relieved
of death; the room left to herself and to the child; he heard it moan
and cry; he saw it harass her, and tire her out, and when she slumbered
in exhaustion, drag her back to consciousness, and hold her with its
little hands upon the rack; but she was constant to it, gentle with it,
patient with it. Patient! Was its loving mother in her inmost heart and
soul, and had its Being knitted up with hers as when she carried it
unborn.

All this time, she was in want: languishing away, in dire and pining
want. With the baby in her arms, she wandered here and there in quest of
occupation; and with its thin face lying in her lap, and looking up in
her