ing a patch of light on the wet road.

Some one stood peering out into the darkness, and, at the sound of his
dragging, stumbling footsteps, Jane Sands ran down to the gate. The
long waiting had made her anxious, for she was breathless and trembling
with excitement.

'Where have you been?' she said; 'we got so frightened. Why are you so
late? Oh, dearie me!' as she caught sight of his face. 'You 're ill!
Something has happened! There, come in, doee, now; you look fit to
drop!'

He pushed by her almost roughly into the house, and dropped down
wearily into the arm-chair. He was too worn out and exhausted to
notice anything, even the warmth and comfort of the bright fire and the
supper ready on the table. He tossed his soaked hat on the ground, and
leaning his elbows on his knees and his head on his hands, sat bowed
down with the feeling of utter wretchedness.

Day after day, night after night, till his life's end, plenty and
comfort and neatness and respectability and warmth in dull monotony;
while outside somewhere in the cold and rain, in poverty and want and
wretchedness, wandered Edith with the wailing baby in her arms.

'You can go to bed,' he said to Jane Sands; 'I don't want any supper.'

She drew back and went softly out of the room, but some one else was
standing there, looking down at the bowed white head with eyes fuller
even of pity and tears than Jane's had been; and then she, too, left
the room, and with a raised finger to Jane, who was waiting in the
passage, she went up-stairs and, as if the way were well known to her,
to the little room which had been got ready so uselessly for the
organist's daughter.

There, sheltered by the bed-curtain, was the cot where Zoe was to have
lain, and there, wonderful to relate, a child's dark head might be
seen, deep in the soft pillow, deeper in soft sleep.

And then this strangely presuming intruder in the organist's house
softly took up the sleeping child, and wrapping a shawl round it,
carried it, still sleeping, downstairs, the dark lashes resting on the
round cheek flushed with sleep and of a fairer tint than gypsy Zoe's,
and the rosy mouth half-open.

The organist still sat with his head in his hands, and did not stir as
she entered, not even when she came and knelt down on the hearth in
front of him.

Jane Sands was unusually tiresome to-night, he thought; why could she
not leave him alone?

And then against his cold hands clasped over his face