are gone. I just know Jack is going to die, and then
I'll die, too, and then what will become of the baby?" Mom Beck sat
down, and took the trembling form in her arms.

"There, there!" she said, soothingly, "have yo' cry out. It will do you
good. Poah chile! all wo'n out with watchin' an' worry. Ne'm min', ole
Becky is as good as a dozen nuhses yet. I'll get Judy to come up an'
look aftah the kitchen. An' nobody ain' gwine to die, honey. Don't you
go to slayin' all you's got befo' you's called on to do it. The good
Lawd is goin' to pahvide fo' us same as Abraham."

The last Sabbath's sermon was still fresh in her mind.

"If we only hold out faithful, there's boun' to be a ram caught by
the hawns some place, even if we haven't got eyes to see through the
thickets. The Lawd will pahvide whethah it's a burnt offerin' or a
meal's vittles. He sho'ly will." Lloyd crept away frightened. It seemed
such an awful thing to see her mother cry.

All at once her bright, happy world had changed to such a strange,
uncertain place. She felt as if all sorts of terrible things were about
to happen.

She went into the parlour, and crawled into a dark corner under the
piano, feeling that there was no place to go for comfort, since the
one who had always kissed away her little troubles was so heart-broken
herself.

There was a patter of soft feet across the carpet, and Fritz poked his
sympathetic nose into her face. She put her arms around him, and laid
her head against his curly back with a desolate sob.

It is pitiful to think how much imaginative children suffer through
their wrong conception of things. She had seen the little roll of bills
in her mother's pocketbook. She had seen how much smaller it grew every
time it was taken out to pay for the expensive wines and medicines that
had to be bought so often. She had heard her mother tell the doctor that
was all that stood between them and the poorhouse.

There was no word known to the Little Colonel that brought such,
thoughts of horror as the word poorhouse.

Her most vivid recollection of her life in New York was something that
happened a few weeks before they left there. One day in the park she ran
away from the maid, who, instead of Mom Beck, had taken charge of her
that afternoon.

When the angry woman found her, she frightened her almost into a spasm
by telling her what always happened to naughty children who ran away.

"They take all their pretty clothes off," she sai