-faced woman who had given him a sixpence instead of a scolding
was a new feature in his experience.

The debate ended in his walking soberly away from the bright visions
in the window to the humbler shop he usually favoured with his
custom, and there laying out the precious sixpence in bread and cold
meat. He took his purchase, the bread under his arm, the meat in a
piece of newspaper, and carried the feast to the doorway where Mike
still sat crouching in the chilly darkness.

"Wake up, Mike; see here what I've got. There's some for you as well;
sit up and begin."

Mike lifted his head from his arm in utter amazement. "You ain't
joking about it?" and then--he was but a little fellow, and hunger
is hard to bear--at the sight of the provisions Patch was laying out
on the newspaper wrapper, he began to cry for very gladness.

"Stop that!" ordered his host, peremptorily. "It's damp enough
without you beginning. Eat away, there's plenty of it."

"Did they trust you at the shop?" queried Mike when the banquet was
well in progress. "You said you'd no money."

"Did they ever trust you at the shop when you'd no money?" demanded
Patch, scornfully. "I paid for it, that's all you need bother
yourself about."

"It isn't that," explained his guest, hastily; "you never had
anything to spare before, and I was wondering how you afforded to
give me such a lot now."

Patch wondered too; then he crumpled up the paper table-cloth, and
flung it into the gutter. "I never wanted to give anything away
before," he remarked; "but perhaps--if you couldn't get it anywhere
else--I might give you a bit another time."

And presently in the dark a dirty hand stretched out and timidly
stroked his sleeve.

Patch went home down the wet streets with his flute. He looked poor
and ragged as ever, but he had at least taken the first step upward
that night in finding out the possibility even for him of helping
another.

SARAH PITT.

LITTLE TOILERS OF THE NIGHT.

III.--YOUNG GIPSIES.

"Do we work at night! yes, I b'lieve yer; and afore daylight too,
leastways, as soon as ever there's light enough to see by. Not always
we don't, but when the old man comes back, an' says we must do a
spell of peggin' there ain't no time hardly to get our vittles,
except perhaps a tater, or a bit o' bread and bacon; but that's ever
so much better than it used to be when poor mother was alive, and she
and me and Aunt Ann and Ben used to work the dolls a