. They were alone now in the church, they two.

The minister's pale cheek flushed; he stepped after her.

"Young woman!"

She stopped, her face turned from him.

"I will send you to some of the city missionaries, or I will go with you
to the Penitents' Retreat. I should like to help you. I--"

He would have exhorted her to reform as kindly as he knew how; he felt
uncomfortable at letting her go so; he remembered just then who washed
the feet of his Master with her tears. But she would not listen. She
turned from him, and out into the storm, some cry on her lips,--it might
have been:--

"There ain't nobody to help me. I _was_ going to be better!"

She sank down on the snow outside, exhausted by the racking cough which
the air had again brought on.

The sexton found her there in the shadow, when he locked the church
doors.

"Meg! you here? What ails you?"

"_Dying_, I suppose!"

The sight of her touched the man, she lying there alone in the snow; he
lingered, hesitated, thought of his own warm home, looked at her again.
If a friendly hand should save the creature,--he had heard of such
things. Well? But how could he take her into his respectable home? What
would people say?--the sexton of the Temple! He had a little wife there
too, pure as the snow upon the ground to-night. Could he bring them
under the same roof?

"Meg!" he said, speaking in his nervous way, though kindly, "you _will_
die here. I'll call the police and let them take you where it's warmer."

But she crawled to her feet again.

"No you won't!"

She walked away as fast as she was able, till she found a still place
down by the water, where no one could see her. There she stood a moment
irresolute, looked up through the storm as if searching for the sky,
then sank upon her knees down in the silent shade of some timber.

Perhaps she was half-frightened at the act, for she knelt so a moment
without speaking. There she began to mutter: "Maybe He won't drive me
off; if they did, maybe he won't. I should just like to tell him,
anyway!"

So she folded her hands, as she had folded them once at her mother's
knee.

"O Lord! I'm tired of being _Meg_. I should like to be something else!"

Then she rose, crossed the bridge, and on past the thinning houses,
walking feebly through the snow that drifted against her feet.

She did not know why she was there, or where she was going. She repeated
softly to herself now and then the words uttered down i