d like
a shepherd, wet as Smilash, with the expression, piteous, patient, and
desperate, of one hard driven by ill-fortune, and at the end of his
resources; two little children, a boy and a girl, almost naked, cowering
under an old sack that had served them as an umbrella; and, lying on
the settee where the two men had laid it, a heap of wretched wearing
apparel, sacking, and rotten matting, with Smilash's coat and
sou'wester, the whole covering a bundle which presently proved to be an
exhausted woman with a tiny infant at her breast. Smilash's expression,
as he looked at her, was ferocious.

"Sorry fur to trouble you, lady," said the man, after glancing anxiously
at Smilash, as if he had expected him to act as spokesman; "but my roof
and the side of my house has gone in the storm, and my missus has been
having another little one, and I am sorry to ill-convenience you, Miss;
but--but--"

"Inconvenience!" exclaimed Smilash. "It is the lady's privilege to
relieve you--her highest privilege!"

The little boy here began to cry from mere misery, and the woman roused
herself to say, "For shame, Tom! before the lady," and then collapsed,
too weak to care for what might happen next in the world. Smilash looked
impatiently at Miss Wilson, who hesitated, and said to him:

"What do you expect me to do?"

"To help us," he replied. Then, with an explosion of nervous energy,
he added: "Do what your heart tells you to do. Give your bed and your
clothes to the woman, and let your girls pitch their books to the devil
for a few days and make something for these poor little creatures to
wear. The poor have worked hard enough to clothe THEM. Let them take
their turn now and clothe the poor."

"No, no. Steady, master," said the man, stepping forward to propitiate
Miss Wilson, and evidently much oppressed by a sense of unwelcomeness.
"It ain't any fault of the lady's. Might I make so bold as to ask you
to put this woman of mine anywhere that may be convenient until morning.
Any sort of a place will do; she's accustomed to rough it. Just to have
a roof over her until I find a room in the village where we can shake
down." Here, led by his own words to contemplate the future, he looked
desolately round the cornice of the hall, as if it were a shelf on which
somebody might have left a suitable lodging for him.

Miss Wilson turned her back decisively and contemptuously on Smilash.
She had recovered herself. "I will keep your wife here," s