ened, and stooping to the floor, he
raised the precious treasure again. "I will carry back the broken
fragments," said he; "they shall go back to my father with me. The harp
is his; I can do nothing more with it for ever. I have ruined it; I
have done nothing for the world, as I promised him. A fine thing it is
for me to go back to him in this dreadful plight. But if he says to me,
`Thou art no son of mine,' I will say, `Father, I am no more _worthy_ to
be called thy son; make me thy hired servant--only pay me in love.'"

And so saying, Tiny began to descend from his attic. Carefully he went
down the stairs, ready to ask help of the first person whose voice he
should hear. But he had groped his way as far as the street door,
before he met a soul. As he stepped upon the threshold, and was about
to move on into the street, a voice--a child's voice--said to him--

"I'm very hungry, sir."

The patient tone of the speaker arrested Tiny's steps, and he pondered a
moment. It was the hearts that belonged to voices like this, which he
had vowed to help! His own heart sunk within him at that thought.
"Wretched soul that I am," said he to himself, thinking of the
opportunities which he had lost. But to the child he said--

"I'm blinder than a bat, and hungry, too. So I'm worse off than you
are. Do you live about here?"

"Just round the corner," said the little girl.

"Is there a physician near here?" he asked next; for a now thought--a
new hope, rather--had come into his heart.

"Yes, sir--very near. I know where it is," said the child. "I got him
once for my mother."

"If you will lead me to him," said Tiny, his voice broken as his heart
was, "I will do a good turn for you. You won't be the loser by it. Who
takes care of you?"

"Of me, sir?" asked the girl, as if surprised that he should think that
any one took care of her. "Nobody. I'm all alone."

"Alone! alone!" repeated Tiny: "your hand is very little; you are a mite
of a girl to be alone."

"They're all dead but me, every one of 'em. Yes, sir, they are."

"No mother?" said Tiny, with a choking voice--thinking of the kind heart
and tender loving eyes away off in the lonely little cottage on the
border of the forest--"no mother, little girl? Was _that_ what you
said?"

"Dead," replied the child.

"Did you love her?" asked Tiny, the poet, while his heart wept burning
tears.

The girl said not a word, but Tiny heard her sob, and held her h