t happened; and lots of money come
into the circus to see Yapp and little Mary--but that was Jubber's luck
and not ours. One night--when she was a little better than seven year
old--

"Oh, ma'am, how I ever lived over that dreadful night I don't know! I
was a sinful, miserable wretch not to have starved sooner than let the
child go into danger; but I was so sorely tempted and driven to it, God
knows!--No, sir! no, ma'am; and many thanks for your kindness, I'll go
on now I've begun. Don't mind me crying; I'll manage to tell it somehow.
The strap--no, I mean the handle; the handle in the strap gave way
all of a sudden--just at the last too! just at the worst time, when he
couldn't catch her--!

"Never--oh, never, never, to my dying day shall I forget the horrible
screech that went up from the whole audience; and the sight of the white
thing lying huddled dead-still on the boards! We hadn't such a number in
as usual that night; and she fell on an empty place between the benches.
I got knocked down by the horses in running to her--I was clean out
of my senses, and didn't know where I was going--Yapp had fallen among
them, and hurt himself badly, trying to catch her--they were running
wild in the ring--the horses was--frantic-like with the noise all round
them. I got up somehow, and a crowd of people jostled me, and I saw my
innocent darling carried among them. I felt hands on me, trying to pull
me back; but I broke away, and got into the waiting-room along with the
rest.

"There she was--my own, own little Mary, that I'd promised her poor
mother to take care of--there she was, lying all white and still on
an old box, with my cloak rolled up as a pillow for her. And people
crowding round her. And a doctor feeling her head all over. And Yapp
among them, held up by two men, with his face all over blood. I wasn't
able to speak or move; I didn't feel as if I was breathing even, till
the doctor stopped, and looked up; and then a great shudder went through
all of us together, as if we'd been one body, instead of twenty or more.

"'It's not killed her,' says the doctor. 'Her brain's escaped injury.'

"I didn't hear another word.

"I don't know how long it was before I seemed to wake up like, with a
dreadful feeling of pain and tearing of everything inside me. I was
on the landlady's bed, and Jemmy was standing over me with a bottle
of salts. 'They've put her to bed,' he says to me, 'and the doctor's
setting her arm.' I didn'