his person it was not difficult--as to fill up the whole entry.

"Oh!" he said softly. "You have come back?"

She looked at the child and shook her head.

"Don't you think you have lived here long enough without paying any
rent? Don't you think that, without any money, you've been a pretty
constant customer at this shop, now?" said Mr. Tugby.

She repeated the same mute appeal.

"Suppose you try and deal somewhere else," he said. "And suppose you
provide yourself with another lodging. Come! Don't you think you could
manage it?"

She said, in a low voice, that it was very late. To-morrow.

"Now I see what you want," said Tugby; "and what you mean. You know
there are two parties in this house about you, and you delight in
setting them by the ears. I don't want any quarrels; I'm speaking softly
to avoid a quarrel; but if you don't go away, I'll speak out loud, and
you shall cause words loud enough to please you. But you shan't come in,
that I am determined."

She put her hair back with her hand, and looked in a sudden manner at
the sky, and the dark lowering distance.

"This is the last night of an Old Year, and I won't carry ill-blood and
quarrelings and disturbances into a New One, to please you nor anybody
else," said Tugby, who was quite a retail Friend and Father. "I wonder
you an't ashamed of yourself, to carry such practices into a New Year.
If you haven't any business in the world, but to be always giving way,
and always making disturbances between man and wife, you'd be better out
of it. Go along with you!"

"Follow her! To desperation!"

Again the old man heard the voices. Looking up, he saw the figures
hovering in the air, and pointing where she went, down the dark street.

"She loves it!" he exclaimed in agonized entreaty for her. "Chimes! she
loves it still!"

"Follow her!" The shadows swept upon the track she had taken like a
cloud.

Oh, for something to awaken her! For any sight or sound, or scent, to
call up tender recollections in a brain on fire! For any gentle image of
the Past, to rise up before her!

"I was her father! I was her father!" cried the old man, stretching out
his hands to the dark shadows flying on above. "Have mercy on her, and
on me! Where does she go? Turn her back! I was her father!"

But, they only pointed to her, as she hurried on; "To desperation! Learn
it from the creature dearest to your heart!"

A hundred voices echoed it. The air was made of breath expended