ide by side in the hospital to which they were
carried.

"Father," said the little one, nestling close to the injured and dying
man, "I think people _can_ be martyrs now!"

But the father was past words, though he heard the child, for he smiled
and pointed upwards. The smile and the action were so significant, and
reminded the child so exactly of the angel who guards the Martyrs'
Monument, that ever afterwards he associated his brave father with those
heroes and heroines of whom the sacred writer says that "the world is
not worthy."

CHAPTER IV.

SOLITARY HOURS.

Giles was kept in the hospital for many weeks, even months. All that
could be done was done for him; but the little, active feet were never
to walk again, and the spine was so injured that he could not even sit
upright. When all that could be done had been done and failed, the boy
was sent back to his broken-down and widowed mother.

Mrs. Mason had removed from the comfortable home where she lived during
her husband's lifetime to the attic in a back street of Westminster,
where she finally died. She took in washing for a livelihood, and Sue,
now twelve years old, was already an accomplished little machinist.[1]

They were both too busy to have time to grieve, and at night were too
utterly worn-out not to sleep soundly. They were kind to Giles lying on
his sick-bed; they both loved him dearly, but they neither saw, nor even
tried to understand, the hunger of grief and longing which filled his
poor little mind.

His terrible loss, his own most terrible injuries, had developed in the
boy all that sensitive nerve organism which can render life so miserable
to its possessor. To hear his beloved father's name mentioned was a
torture to him; and yet his mother and Sue spoke of it with what seemed
to the boy reckless indifference day after day. Two things, however,
comforted him--one the memory of the angel figure over the Martyrs'
Monument at Smithfield, the other the deep notes of Big Ben. His father,
too, had been a martyr, and that angel stood there to signify his
victory as well as the victory of those others who withstood the torture
by fire; and Big Ben, with its solemn, vibrating notes, seemed to his
vivid imagination like that same angel speaking.

Though an active, restless boy before his illness, he became now very
patient. He would lie on his back, not reading, for he had forgotten
what little his father taught him, but apparently lost in