And now she found him dead, and Sylvia, tearless and almost
unconscious, lying by him, her hand holding his, her other thrown
around him.

Kester, poor old man, was sobbing bitterly; but she not at all.

Then Hester bore her child to her, and Sylvia opened wide her
miserable eyes, and only stared, as if all sense was gone from her.
But Bella suddenly rousing up at the sight of the poor, scarred,
peaceful face, cried out,--

'Poor man who was so hungry. Is he not hungry now?'

'No,' said Hester, softly. 'The former things are passed away--and
he is gone where there is no more sorrow, and no more pain.'

But then she broke down into weeping and crying. Sylvia sat up and
looked at her.

'Why do yo' cry, Hester?' she said. 'Yo' niver said that yo'
wouldn't forgive him as long as yo' lived. Yo' niver broke the heart
of him that loved yo', and let him almost starve at yo'r very door.
Oh, Philip! my Philip, tender and true.'

Then Hester came round and closed the sad half-open eyes; kissing
the calm brow with a long farewell kiss. As she did so, her eye fell
on a black ribbon round his neck. She partly lifted it out; to it
was hung a half-crown piece.

'This is the piece he left at William Darley's to be bored,' said
she, 'not many days ago.'

Bella had crept to her mother's arms as a known haven in this
strange place; and the touch of his child loosened the fountains of
her tears. She stretched out her hand for the black ribbon, put it
round her own neck; after a while she said,

'If I live very long, and try hard to be very good all that time, do
yo' think, Hester, as God will let me to him where he is?'

* * * * *

Monkshaven is altered now into a rising bathing place. Yet, standing
near the site of widow Dobson's house on a summer's night, at the
ebb of a spring-tide, you may hear the waves come lapping up the
shelving shore with the same ceaseless, ever-recurrent sound as that
which Philip listened to in the pauses between life and death.

And so it will be until 'there shall be no more sea'.

But the memory of man fades away. A few old people can still tell
you the tradition of the man who died in a cottage somewhere about
this spot,--died of starvation while his wife lived in hard-hearted
plenty not two good stone-throws away. This is the form into which
popular feeling, and ignorance of the real facts, have moulded the
story. Not long since a lady went to the 'Public Baths',