what better wad she be i' the mornin'? Lat her be, puir thing!"

She received the whisky in a broken tea-cup, swallowed some of it
eagerly, then, to the horror of the youths, put some of it into the
mouth of her child from her own. Draining the last drops from the
cup, she set it quietly down, turned, and without a word spoken, for
she had paid beforehand, came out, her face looking just as white
and thin as before, but having another expression in the eyes of it.
At the sight Donal's wisdom forsook him.

"Eh, wuman," he cried, "yon wasna what ye hed the shillin' for!"

"Ye said naething," answered the poor creature, humbly, and walked
on, hanging her head, and pressing her baby to her bosom.

The boys looked at each other.

"That wasna the gait yer shillin' sud hae gane, Gibbie," said Donal.
"It's clear it winna dee to gie shillin's to sic like as her. Wha
kens but the hunger an' the caul', an' the want o' whisky may be the
wuman's evil things here, 'at she may 'scape the hellfire o' the
Rich Man hereafter?"

He stopped, for Gibbie was weeping. The woman and her child he
would have taken to his very heart, and could do nothing for them.
Love seemed helpless, for money was useless. It set him thinking
much, and the result appeared. From that hour the case of the
homeless haunted his heart and brain and imagination; and as his
natural affections found themselves repelled and chilled in what is
called Society, they took refuge more and more with the houseless
and hungry and shivering. Through them, also, he now, for the first
time, began to find grave and troublous questions mingling with his
faith and hope; so that already he began to be rewarded for his
love: to the true heart every doubt is a door. I will not follow
and describe the opening of these doors to Gibbie, but, as what he
discovered found always its first utterance in action, wait until I
can show the result.

For the time the youths were again a little relieved about the
woman: following her still, to a yet more wretched part of the city,
they saw her knock at a door, pay something, and be admitted. It
looked a dreadful refuge, but she was at least under cover, and
shelter, in such a climate as ours in winter, must be the first
rudimentary notion of salvation. No longer haunted with the idea of
her wandering all night about the comfortless streets, "like a ghost
awake in Memphis," Donal said, they went home. But it was long
before they