a walk of about five minutes she turned off into a narrow lane,
of that obscure and comfortless class which is to be found in almost all
small oldfashioned towns, chill, without ventilation, reeking with all
manner of offensive effluviae, and lined by dingy, smoky, sickly and
pent-up buildings, frequently not only in a wretched but in a dangerous
condition.

'Your father has changed his abode since I last visited him, and, I am
afraid, much for the worse,' said I.

'Indeed he has, sir; but we must not complain,' replied she. 'We have to
thank God that we have lodging and food, though it's poor enough, it is,
your honour.'

Poor child! thought I, how many an older head might learn wisdom from
thee--how many a luxurious philosopher, who is skilled to preach but not
to suffer, might not thy patient words put to the blush! The manner
and language of this child were alike above her years and station;
and, indeed, in all cases in which the cares and sorrows of life have
anticipated their usual date, and have fallen, as they sometimes do,
with melancholy prematurity to the lot of childhood, I have observed the
result to have proved uniformly the same. A young mind, to which joy and
indulgence have been strangers, and to which suffering and self-denial
have been familiarised from the first, acquires a solidity and an
elevation which no other discipline could have bestowed, and which, in
the present case, communicated a striking but mournful peculiarity to
the manners, even to the voice, of the child. We paused before a narrow,
crazy door, which she opened by means of a latch, and we forthwith began
to ascend the steep and broken stairs which led upwards to the sick
man's room.

As we mounted flight after flight towards the garret-floor, I heard more
and more distinctly the hurried talking of many voices. I could also
distinguish the low sobbing of a female. On arriving upon the uppermost
lobby these sounds became fully audible.

'This way, your honour,' said my little conductress; at the same time,
pushing open a door of patched and half-rotten plank, she admitted me
into the squalid chamber of death and misery. But one candle, held in
the fingers of a scared and haggard-looking child, was burning in the
room, and that so dim that all was twilight or darkness except within
its immediate influence. The general obscurity, however, served to throw
into prominent and startling relief the death-bed and its occupant. The
light