cy.

"They have dragged her away to some hiding," sensed the poor blind
brain, "or perhaps that carriage is bearing her away from me forever.
Oh, what shall I do?" she cried aloud, in tones that would have
thrilled a hearer's heart with pity. "Alone--alone! Abandoned!"

With the last word the full horror of her situation surged upon her,
and she burst into a torrent of tears. Alone in Paris! Blind and
alone, without relatives or friends.

You who sit in a cozy home, surrounded by safeguards and comforts, can
have no idea of the blind foundling's utter dependence or the terrible
meaning conveyed by the one word "abandoned."

"What will become of me?" she cried, between the sobs. "Alone in this
great city; helpless and blind--my God, what _shall_ I do? Where am I
to go? I do not know which way to turn!"

Self-preservation, and the piteous hope that the house fronts might
give her some clue to her bearings, caused the girl to stagger from
the centre of the square to the sides. Along one of them she picked
her way, moaning for help and having not even a stick to guide her.
Slowly, painfully she groped around the Place until unwittingly she
approached the railing or wall which served as a guard to the steep
bank that descended to the river.

Along this she felt her way until suddenly her hands met the empty
air. What, now? Should she return as she had come? No, she thought;
the flagging beneath her feet was heavy and substantial: 'twas
probably the intersection of another street, and a few steps would
bring her to house fronts again.

Louise walked down the flags and stepped into nothingness--thirty feet
sheer precipice into the river Seine!

In the instant horror of falling to death off the stone pier, she
found herself saved by being clasped in a man's arms.

"Great heavens!" this individual exclaimed as he bore her to the
centre of the square. "What were you going to do?"

"Nothing--nothing--what was it?" cried Louise incoherently, realizing
only that she had been pulled back from death's door.

"Another moment," said the man in horror-stricken accents, "and you
would have been drowned in the Seine! I leaped up the steps and just
managed to catch you. Lucky that five minutes ago I had to go down to
the river to fill my water can. You--"

The tones of the voice, which struck Louise as young-old in its
timbre, were soft and kind with a refined and even plaintive quality
albeit not cultured. Here was a good so