In prison and out

The small back room, which was the home of a family, was not much larger than a prison cell, and in point of cleanliness, light, and ventilation, was far inferior to it. There was a fair-sized sash window, but more than half the panes were broken, and the place of the glass supplied by paper, or rags so worn as to be useless for any other purpose. Besides this, the next row of houses, in this thick knot of dwelling-places, was built so close as to shut out even a glimpse of the sky from the rooms on the ground-floor of a house four stories high. The whole street had been originally built for tenants of a better class, but from some reason or other it had fallen into the occupation of the poorest, and each room was considered sufficient accommodation for a separate family.

This small, dark, back room had been intended for a kitchen. Close against the window stood the dust-bin, into which was emptied all the waste of the house, when it was not cast out into the street.

Fortunately there was very little waste of food; for every scrap that could be eaten was greedily devoured, except in very extraordinarily good times. It was fortunate, for the dust-bin was seldom looked after, as the inmates of the crowded dwelling knew little and cared less for sanitary laws. Even the poor hard-working woman, who had been struggling for years to pay the rent of this dark unwholesome den as a home for herself and her children, hardly gave a thought to the tainted air they breathed whether the window was open or shut. She sighed now and then for better light, and the cool freshness of free air; but darkness and a sickly atmosphere seemed to be the natural lot of all about her, and she was not given to murmur. She had grown so weary with the long and monotonous battle of life that she had no longer energy enough to murmur. It was God's will, she said to herself, finding something like peace in the belief. There was a darker depth of misery to which she had not yet sunk--that of feeling there was no God at all.

Her husband had been dead for ten years; and she had had two little children to hamper all her efforts to lift herself and them out of their poverty. She had often failed to procure necessaries, and she had never been so successful as to be able to provide for more than their barest wants. They had all learned how to pinch hard, how to eat little enough, and how to wear the scantiest clothing. They were always trying to trick Nature, who never ceased to demand urgently more than they could give, but who consented to take less than her claim, though the landlord would not.

The children spent most of their waking hours in the street, for there was a small boiler in the kitchen, and the mother took in washing, with which every inch of the small room was crowded. When the weather was too bad for them to be in the streets, they lived on the common staircase or in the passages, hearing and seeing every form of evil, and a few forms of good also, swarming about them; growing up amongst them, as other children grow up amid the peaceful influences of well-ordered homes.

In the mother's mind there were still lingering dim memories of a very different childhood, and of better times before her marriage. Sometimes there came to her as there comes to all of us, sudden flashes of light out of the misty past; and she saw again her cottage home down in the country, and the village school she went to, and her first place as a young servant in the vicarage, where the clergyman's wife had taken care she should keep up her acquaintance with the collects and the catechism. Most of the collects and nearly all the catechism had faded away from her remembrance; but many a quiet Sunday afternoon she had talked to her children of the vicarage garden, where flowers grew all the year round, and of the village green, where boys and girls could play unmolested and unnoticed; and how she left home to come to London for high wages, and had never seen it again. Then she told them of the gay and grand doings there had been in the great houses where she had been in service, until she met with their father, and gave up all the grandeur and luxury for love of him. And then her voice would falter a little as she talked to them of his death, and of all her troubles following quickly one after another, till she was thankful to have even such a home as this.

The poor mother was ignorant, but her ignorance was light and knowledge compared with that of her children. They knew nothing and thought of nothing beyond what they saw and heard about them. David could read a little, but Bess not at all. The thick knot of streets was swarming with children, and it was not difficult to escape the notice of the school inspector on his occasional visits, especially as Bess was thirteen, and David nearly fourteen years of age. The boy had begun to earn a few pence in the streets as soon as he could sell matches; and he was now getting a precarious and uncertain living for himself by "hob-jobbing" as he called it. The Sunday afternoons and evenings, when their mother's work stood still for a few short hours, were their holidays. She had no longer a Sunday gown to wear, but she never failed to put on her wedding-ring, which on week-days was carefully laid aside whilst she was washing, lest it should get too much worn with her hard work. Bess and David felt that their mother was different from most other women in the street. She did not drink, or swear, or brawl; and all their little world knew she was honest. They were vaguely fond of her good character, and David was beginning to feel for her a protecting tenderness he could not have put into words.

For a long while neither of them knew that she was suffering from that fatal and painful disease of cancer, which had thrust its deep roots into her very life. When he did know it, David's heart burned within him to see her standing bravely at her washing-tub, enduring her agony as patiently as she could. At last she was compelled to seek help from the parish; and the relieving officer, after visiting her, recommended out-door relief. There was no doubt what the end must be, and not much uncertainty as to how soon the end must come. Four or five shillings a week would cost the parish less than taking the woman and her girl, even if the boy was left to care for himself, into the house, and provide for her the necessaries and comforts the medical officer would certainly pronounce indispensable. He advised a carefully reckoned dole of four and eightpence a week.

Mrs. Fell was more than satisfied. Separation from her children would have been more bitter than death itself; but now she would have Bess and David with her as long as she could keep death at bay. The four shillings and eightpence would pay her rent, and leave almost fourpence a day for other expenses! If she could only drag on through the winter, and keep a home for Bess and David, she would not murmur however hard her pain was. She could bear worse anguish than she had yet borne for their sakes.

But there was one enemy she had not thought of. The wasting caused by her malady produced a craving hunger, worse to endure, if possible, than the malady itself. It was no longer possible to cheat herself, as she had been used to do in former years, with putting off her hunger until it changed into a dull faintness. The gnawing pain showed itself too plainly in the desperate clenching of her teeth, and the wistful craving of her sunken eyes. Threepence and three farthings a day--one penny and one farthing a piece--could do little towards maintaining a truce with this deadly foe, who must surely conquer her before the winter could be ended.

"It's just as if a wolf was gnawin' me," she said to David, one evening when he came in with a loaf of bread, and a slice of cooked fish from a stall in the street; "not as ever I see a wolf, save once when father was alive, and you was a baby, and we all went to the Zoological Gardens for a holiday. It feels as if all the hunger I ever had had hidden itself away somewhere, and heaped itself up, and is all let loose on me now. You children, take your share first, for fear I'd eat it all, and not leave enough for you."

"It's all for you and Bess, mother," he answered; "I ate my supper at the stall."

He did not say that he had made his supper of a crust of mouldy bread he had found lying in the street, and was still as hungry as a growing lad generally is. Like his mother he was quite used to disregard the urgent claims of his appetite. But he sat down at the end of her ironing-board, and watched her by the feeble light of the candle, as she greedily devoured the food he had brought. It seemed as if his eyes were opened to see her more clearly than he had ever done before, and her face was indelibly impressed upon his memory. For the first time, as it appeared to him, he noticed her thin sunken cheeks, her scanty hair turning grey, her eager bright eyes, and the suffering that filled her whole face. The tears dimmed his sight for an instant, and a slight shiver ran through him, as he gazed intently on her.

"Mother," he said, "I only took fourpence all day for running two errands, for all I've been on the look-out sharp. Mother, I must take to beggin'".

"No, no!" she answered, looking up for a moment from the food she was so eagerly eating.

"I must," he went on; "there's lots o' money to be got that way. They all says so. I couldn't make myself look hungrier than I am; and I'll tell the truth, as you're dyin' of a cancer, ay! and dyin' of hunger. I know there'd be folks as would help us. I hate the thought of it as much as you; but it's better me than Bess. Little Bess 'ud be frightened," he added, looking at his ragged sister, for whose sake he had fought many a battle, and borne many a beating in the streets.

"I never thought it 'ud come to beggin'," said his mother in a sorrowful, faltering voice.

"Nor me," continued David, "but there's hardly no work for such as me, as don't know nothink. I'd have chose to be a carpenter, like father; but there's no chance of that. Don't you cry, mother; you've done your best for us, and it's my turn to do my best for you. And beggin's the best as I can do."

David felt it a bitter pass to come to. Untaught and ignorant as he was, he had his own dream of ambition to be a carpenter, and earn wages like his father. He had gone now and then to a nightschool, and learned after a fashion to read and write a little; but there was no school where a ragged boy like him could learn any kind of handicraft, by which he could earn a livelihood. If there had been such a place, how gladly would he have gone to it, and how heartily would he have set himself to work! There was no one to blame perhaps; but still he felt it to be a hard and bitter lot to turn out as a beggar.

"I'll do it," he said, after a long silence, "not just round here, you know, mother; but out in the country, where folks ain't all in such a hurry. I'll take care of the police; and I'll be back again afore Sunday, and you've got Bess with you, so as you won't be lonesome. If I've luck I'll try again next week. There's kind rich folk as 'ud do some-think for you, if they only knew; and I'll go and find 'em out. Don't you take on and fret, mother. It ain't thievin', you know."

"I'll think about it in the night, Davy," she answered sadly.

In the painful, wakeful hours of the night, the poor mother thought of her boy tramping the roads in his ragged clothing, and with his almost bare feet, and stopping the passers-by to ask for alms. It had been the aim of her long-laborious life to save herself and her children from beggary. Oh! if this cruel malady had only spared her another two or three years, until David had been more of a man, and Bess a grown-up girl! She could have lain down to die thankfully then, though now she had a terrible dread of dying. But as far as she could see there was nothing else to be done than to let David try his luck. There were good rich folks, as he said, if he could only find them. She must let him go and search for them.

"You may go," she said, in the morning, after they had eaten together the few fragments her hunger had been able to spare the night before, "and God bless you, Davy! Don't you never do nothink save beg. That's bad enough, but remember both of yer, what I always said, 'Keep thy hands from pickin' and stealin''. Them's good words to go by. And, Davy, come back as soon as you can, for I'll be hungrier for a sight of you than I am for victuals. Always tell out your tale quiet and true, as your mother's dying of cancer and famishin' with hunger; and if they answer 'No,' or shakes their heads, turn away at once, and try somebody else. Don't stop folks as are in a hurry. Kiss me afore you go, Davy."

It seemed a solemn thing to do; he felt half choked, and could not speak a word as he bent down to kiss her tenderly. He put his arm round his sister's neck, and kissed her too; and then, catching up his threadbare cap, he went to the door, trying to whistle a cheery street tune. He paused in the doorway, and looked back on them.

"Good-bye, mother," he cried; "don't you fret after me."

David was in no haste to enter upon his new calling. He walked on until he had left the busier streets far behind him, and had come upon the open and quieter roads in the suburbs. Here and there trees were growing on the inner side of garden walls, and stretched out their leafy branches, tinted with autumn colours, over the side paths along which he pursued his unfamiliar way. The passers-by were more leisurely than those in the city, and occasionally gave him a glance, as if they both saw and noticed him; such a glance as he never met amidst the crowds who jostled one another in the thoroughfares he was accustomed to. This observation made him feel shy, and more averse than ever to begin his unwelcome task. It was past noonday before he could bring himself to stop a kindly looking lady who had looked pleasantly on him, and to beg from her help for his mother.

His first appeal was successful, and gave him fresh courage to try again. The kind-hearted woman had helped him to take his first step downwards. He met with rebuffs, and felt downcast and ashamed, but he also met with persons who gave him money to get rid of his pinched face, and others who believed his story, though he was several miles from home, and bestowed upon him a penny or two, feeling they had done all they were called upon to do for a perishing fellow-creature. Not one took any steps to verify his story, but passed on, and soon forgot the ragged lad, or remembered him with a pleasant glow of satisfaction in having discharged a Christian duty.

By the time night fell David was ten miles from home, and felt footsore and weary, for his worn-out shoes, bought at some rag-mart, chafed his feet, and did not even keep out the dust of the dry roads. But he had taken three shillings and eight-pence; and he counted the coppers from one hand to another with untold joyfulness. So much money he had never possessed at one time in his whole life; and when he lay down to rest in a lodging-house in a back street of the town he had reached by nightfall he could not sleep soundly, partly from delight, and partly from the fear of being robbed. If he had luck like this he would go home rich on Saturday night. Early in the morning he started off again to pursue his new calling, which was quickly losing its sense of degradation. If begging was so profitable a business, and he had no chance of being trained for any other by which he could earn honest wages, it was no wonder that the boy should choose beggary rather than starvation. David began to feel that there was less chance of dying of cold or hunger.

It was a pleasant autumn day, and numbers of people were about the roads, sauntering leisurely in the warm and bright sunshine. Again many of them were willing enough to give a penny to the half-shy boy, who asked in a quiet tone for alms. He had not fallen into any professional whine as yet, and he was easily repulsed, so easily that some, who refused at first to give, called after him to come back. There was a touching air of misery about his thin, overgrown frame and pinched face, which appealed silently for help. He was willing, he said, to clean boots, or clean steps, or do any other job that could be found for him as a labour test; but very few persons took the trouble to find him work to do. It was much easier to take a penny out of the purse, drop it into his hand and pass on, with a feeling of satisfaction of at once getting rid of a painful object and of appeasing the conscience, which seemed about to demand that some remedy should be found for abject poverty like his. Possibly it did not occur to any of these well-meaning and charitable persons that they were aiding and encouraging the poor lad to break one of the laws of the country.

Whilst it was still clay, though the sun was sinking in the sky, David sat down under a hedge to count over his heavy load of pence, which threatened to be too weighty for his ragged pockets. He had now five shillings' worth of copper, and he did not know where to exchange them for silver. He placed his old cap between his feet, and dropped in the coins one after another, handling them with an almost wild delight. How rich he would be to go home to his mother, if he had equal luck on his way back! Five shillings for two days' begging! Now he had found out how easy and profitable it was, and how little risk attended it, if you only kept out of sight of the police, his mother and Bess should never know want again. He felt very joyous, and his joy found vent in clear shrill whistling of the tunes he had learned from street-organs. He was whistling through the merriest one he knew, when a hand was laid heavily on his shoulder, and looking up he saw the familiar uniform of a policeman.

"You're in fine spirits, my lad," he said, "what's this you're crowing over, eh? Where did you get all those coppers in your cap? How did you come by them, eh?"

David could not speak, though he tried to seize and hide away his gains; but in vain. The policeman picked up his cap and weighed it in his hand.

"You've been begging on the roads," he said, in a matter-of-course manner; "and you've broke the laws. You see yonder big white house there, over the garden wall?"

"Yes," stammered David.

"You begged of the old gent as lives there," continued the policeman; "and he says it's a nuisance, and must be put down. So you must come along with me."

For a minute David neither moved nor spoke. This sudden reversal of all his gladness and prospects paralysed him. He had known all the while that any policeman had the power to take him up for begging, and lock him for the night in a police-cell, and charge him with his offence before a magistrate. Not a few of his acquaintances had been in jail, and they mostly said it was for begging. But the thought of his mother fretting and longing for him at home, and the grief and terror she would feel if he did not get back on Saturday night as he had promised, flashed across him. The policeman was busy counting over the heap of coppers, and David saw his chance and seized it. He sprang to his feet, and fled away with as fast steps as if he had been fleeing for his life.

But it was of no avail to try to escape from the strong and swift policeman, who instantly pursued him. David was weak and tired, and could not have run far, if it had been for his life. He felt himself caught firmly by the collar, and shaken, whilst two or three passers-by stood still, witnessing his capture.

"You young simpleton!" said the policeman; "you're only making it all the worse for yourself. Why don't you get honest work to do?"

"Ay, it is a shame!" said one of the spectators; "a big lad of his age, that ought to be at honest work, earning his own bread."

"Nobody's ever taught me how to work!" sobbed David, standing bewildered and ashamed, the centre of a gathering crowd.

"We'll teach you that in gaol, my fine fellow," said the policeman, marching him off, followed by a train of rough lads, which grew larger and noisier until they reached the police-station and David was led in out of their sight.

It was a dreary night for David. In his anxiety to save all he could to carry home with him, he had not tasted a morsel since morning, and his meal then had been nothing but a pennyworth of bread, which he had taken reluctantly from his treasure. He had been thinking of buying his supper, and what it would cost, when his gains had been seized from him, and handed over to the custody of the police superintendent. He was weary, too, footsore and worn out with his long tramp. But neither his hunger nor fatigue pressed upon him with most bitterness. He crouched down in a corner of the cell, and thought of his mother and Bess looking out for him all Saturday, and waiting and watching, and listening for him to open the door, and never seeing him at all! His mother had said she would be hungrier for a sight of him than for bread! Would they send him to gaol for begging? Boys had been sent there for three days or a week, and his mother would be fretting all that time. He would lose his money, too, and go home as penniless as he left it. He hid his face in his hands, and wept bitterly till his tears were exhausted, and a raging headache followed. At times he slumbered a little, sobbing heavily in his short and troubled sleep. When he woke he felt the pangs of hunger sharper than usual, for he had been nearly a night and a day without tasting food, and his hunger made him think again of his mother. Hungry, weary, and bewildered, with an aching head and a heart full of care and bitterness, David passed through the long and weary hours of the night.

When food was provided for him the next day he could not eat it. He felt sick with dread of the moment when he should be taken before the magistrate. He saw other prisoners summoned and led away to receive their doom; but his turn seemed long in coming. At last it came. He obeyed the call of his name, and found himself, dizzy-headed and sick at heart, standing in a large room, with a policeman beside him. An old gentleman from whom he had asked help the day before brought the charge against him, and added to it that the boy had been in the habit of begging along the roads. There was a singing in David's ears, through which he listened to the charge made against him, and to the policeman in the witness-box giving his evidence.

"Have you anything to say for yourself? asked a voice in front of him; and David raised his dim eyes to the face of the magistrate, but did not answer, though his lips moved a little.

"Did you hear the charge?" asked the magistrate again.

"Yes," answered David, with a violent effort; "but I were only beggin', sir; I never stole a farthing in my life."

"Is there any previous charge against this boy?" inquired the magistrate.

A second policeman stepped into the witness-box, and David turned his dazed eyes upon him. He had never seen him before.

"I have a previous charge of stealing iron against the prisoner--"

"It's not true!" cried out David, in a voice shrill with terror. "I never was a thief. Somebody ask my mother."

"Silence!" said the officer who had him in charge, with a sharp grip of his arm. "You must not interrupt the Court."

"He was convicted of theft before your worship six months ago," pursued the policeman in the box, taking no notice of David's interruption. "He went then by the name of John Fell, and was sentenced to twenty-one days."

"Have you anything more to say?" asked the magistrate, looking again at David.

"It wasn't me!" he answered vehemently, "he's mistook me for some other boy. I never stole nothing, and I never begged afore. You ask my mother. Oh, what will become of my mother and little Bess?"

"You should have thought of your mother before you broke the laws of your country," said the magistrate. "This neighbourhood is infested with beggars, and we must put a stop to the nuisance. I shall send you to gaol for three calendar months, when you will be taught a trade by which you may earn an honest livelihood."

David was hustled away and another case called. His had occupied scarcely four minutes. The day was a busy one, as there had been a large fair held in the district, and there was no more time to be spent upon a boy clearly guilty of begging, and who had been convicted of theft. No one doubted for a moment this latter statement, or thought it in the least necessary to inquire if the boy's vehement denial had any truth in it. Another prisoner stood at the bar, and David Fell was at once forgotten.

It seemed to David as if he had been suddenly struck deaf; no other sound reached his brain after he heard the words, "To gaol for three months." Three months in gaol! Not to see his mother for three months! Perhaps never to see her again, for who could tell that she would live for three months? It was only a few minutes since he heard his name called out before he was hurried into Court; but it might have been many years.

He felt as if his mother might have been dead long ago; as if it was very long ago since he left home, with her voice sounding in his ears. He seemed to hear her saying "God bless you, David!" and the magistrate's voice directly following it, "I shall send you to gaol for three months." His bewildered brain kept repeating, "God bless you Davy! I shall send you to gaol for three months." It was as if some one was mocking him with these words.

No doubt it was somebody's duty to inform Mrs. Fell of David's conviction and his sentence to three months' imprisonment, but whether the official notice was sent to the mother of the boy who had been previously convicted of theft, or failed to reach David's mother through the post, we do not know. She never received the information.

Mrs. Fell and Bess felt the time pass heavily while he was away. The poor woman had always been more careful of her children than the neighbours were; and she had never allowed Bess to play about the streets, if David was not at hand to take care of her. Bess was growing a tall and pretty girl now, and needed more than ever to have somebody to look after her. So she was compelled to stay indoors, shut up in the close and tainted atmosphere, and the dim light of their miserable home. Mrs. Fell did a little washing still by stealth, but she was fearful of the relieving officer finding her at her tub, and taking off her allowance. She could earn only a few pence, and that with sharp pain; but the pangs of hunger were sharper. Bess was old enough and willing to help, though she could not earn sufficient altogether for her own maintenance. Still, if David should happen to come back with a little money to go on with, all would be well for another week or two, and some work might turn up for him.

Mrs. Fell was very lonesome without her boy, and sorely did she miss him. She was one of those mothers who think nothing of their girls in comparison with their sons; and David had always been good to her, and cheered her up when she was most downcast. She fancied he was growing like his father; and the sound of his voice or his footstep brought back the memories of happier days. David had promised to be home on Saturday, and she almost expected him on Friday night; but Friday night passed by and David was still away. During the long, sleepless hours of darkness she was thinking of him ceaselessly, little dreaming that her boy was spending his first night in gaol.

Saturday passed slowly by; and when evening came Mrs. Fell set her door ajar, and sat just within it in the dark, looking out into the lighted passage and staircase, common to all the lodgers. David would be sure to whistle as he came down the street, and her ear would catch the sound while he was still a long way off. She felt no hunger tonight, and was scarcely conscious of her pain. All her thoughts and cares were centred on her boy.

"He'd never break his promise, Bess," she said, softly; "he knows I'm hungering for a sight of him, and whatever luck he's had he's sure to come home to-night. I've wished a thousand times as I'd never let him go; but it's over now, and he shall never go again if we can only keep him from it. We'll get more washing done, you and me, won't we, Bess? And maybe David will have better luck in getting jobs to do. Oh, my lad, my lad! But he'll be here very soon now."

She checked the sobs which hindered her from hearing, and sat still for some minutes, listening with strained ears to catch his whistle amid the hubbub of sounds that noised about her. At last she sent Bess to the street-door to look up the narrow, ill-lighted street to the corner with the brilliantly illuminated spirit vaults, round which David might come any moment with the proceeds of his begging expedition. Bess had some bright visions of her own, based upon the stories of successful beggary which the neighbours told to one another, and she was as full of impatient anticipation as her mother.

"It's almost like the time I used to watch for father, Bess, before we were wed," said Mrs. Fell, plaintively, "and I was never more on the fidgets then than I am now for Davy, poor lad! I can't keep myself still a moment, Father used to wear a plush weskit as was as soft as soft could be, and I'd dearly like Davy to have one like it. I priced one in a shop one day, but it was more than I could give when I was in full work. And, Bess, I'd like you to have a pink cotton gown, such as I was wed in; but there, it's no use to think on such things! It's God's will, and He knows best. If my lad 'ud only come in I should care for nothing."

Bess went off to the door, stepping softly past the front room, where their next neighbour, Blackett, lived, and gazed up to the stream of light shining across the road through the tavern window. She stood there for a few minutes in silence.

"He's comin', mother," cried Bess, quietly; and the poor woman's heart throbbed painfully as she leaned back against the wall almost faint from joy, whilst Bess ran eagerly up the street towards the light, which for a brief moment had irradiated the figure of her brother. But it was not David whom she met, though it was a boy of his age and size; and Bess felt near crying out aloud when she saw who it was. Still, he was an old companion and playfellow, and as nearly a friend as Blackett's son could be; for he was Roger Blackett, whose father, living in the front room on the ground-floor, close against the door through which every one went in and out, was the terror of all the inmates of the crowded house.

"Roger, have you seen our Davy anywhere?" she inquired.

"No, I haven't," he answered. "Is father in the house, Bess?"

"Ay!" she said.

"Then I'll stay outside," he went on. "He does nothing but bang me, and curse at me for an idle dog and a cowardly soft. He's drove the rest of 'em into thievin', and he'll never let me a-be till he's drove me to it. I was very near it tonight, Bess."

"Oh, don't!" she cried, "don't! I'd never do worse than beg, if I was you. I know David 'ud die afore he'd steal, and so 'ud mother. We'd all clem to death afore we'd take to thievin'".

"I'd have been drove to it long ago," said Roger, "if it hadn't been along of you and your mother, Bess. Father's always larfin' at folks like you settin' up to be honest; and he's always sayin' as I haven't got a drop of real blood in me. I'm bound to be drove to it, however long I fight shy of it. Only it 'ud vex you, Bess."

"Ah!" she answered, earnestly. "Mother 'ud never let David or me speak to you again. She's set dead agen thievin', mother is. She won't let us know any gaol-birds. You see," continued Bess, with an air of pride, "none of us has ever been in trouble--up before the justices, you know. We've never had nothink to do with the police, 'cept civility; and the police has nothink to do with us. Better starve nor steal, mother says."

But Bess had been so long in the street that Mrs. Fell's impatience had conquered her. She had crept to the street door, and was making her way painfully towards them.

"Bess, is it Davy?" she called. "Be sharp, and bring him here."

"We're coming, mother," cried Bess; "it's only Roger. You go back, and let him come into our room for a bit, for company. You come with me, Roger, and talk a bit to mother: she's frettin' after Davy so! You ask her about the parson's garden, and the place where she used to live, and anything you can think of, for a bit, till Davy comes."

The two children stole softly past the closed door of the front room, and hid themselves in the darkness of Mrs. Fell's kitchen.

"It's nobody but poor Roger," said Bess, softly. "Davy's not come yet, and Roger's afeard of his father till he gets dead drunk. Let him stay with us a bit, mother."

There had always been a dread in Mrs. Fell's mind of her children growing too intimate with Roger Blackett, whose two elder brothers were openly pursuing the successful calling of thieves, with occasional periods of absence supposed to be passed in prison; but she had been too much afraid of Blackett to forbid all intercourse with his sons. Roger was nearly fourteen, and had not been in trouble yet, so she could not very well refuse to let him enter her room.

"He's welcome," she said coldly, "as long as he keeps himself honest."

"That won't be for long," muttered Roger; "father's always a-goin' on with me to keep myself, and I've got no way o' keeping myself, save thievin'. He's getting angrier with me every day."

"But there's God 'll be angry with you if you thieve," said Mrs. Fell; "and if you make Him angry, He can do worse at you than your father. You ought to be afeard of Him."

"Where is He?" asked Roger.

"He lives in heaven, where good folks go when they die," she answered; "but He sees everything, and can do everything. Everything as happens is just what He pleases. He could make us all rich and well and happy in a moment o' time, if He chose; but it's His will we should be poor and ill and miserable, and it's all right, somehow; so we must keep still, and believe as it's all right. I know I often says, 'It's God's will,' and it seems a little better. But what I was goin' to tell you is, that God won't ever have thieves in heaven. 'There's a great pit somewhere, full of fire and brimstone, where all wicked folks go, and if you thieve you'll go there. I don't know exactly where it is, or how it is, but it's all gospel, they say. It's worse than hundreds of gaols."

The woman's low, weak, faltering voice, uttering these terrible words in the darkness, made Roger's heart shrink with a strange awe and dread. He was glad to feel Bess close beside him, and to know that she was listening as well as himself.

"God's worse than father," he said, trembling.

"No, no," continued Mrs. Fell; "I've heard folks preachin' in the streets, and some among 'em said He loves us all, somehow. I heard one of 'em saying over and over again 'God is love.' And he'd some little tickets, about as big as pawn-tickets, with those words printed plain on 'em, and he gave one to everybody as asked him. I s'pose there's some truth in it. 'God is love,' I say to myself hundreds o' times in the nights, when I lie awake for pain; and there's comfort in it. Ay, when my pains are worst, and when I'm faintin' with hunger, if I say 'God is love,' it helps me on a bit. It's all I know, and I don't know that very clear."

"Do God love everybody?" inquired Roger, anxiously.

"Yes," she answered.

"Do He love father?" he asked again.

"Yes, I s'pose so," she said in a tone of doubt.

"Then I don't believe it," went on Roger. "He didn't ought to love father; He ought to put him in that pit o' fire and brimstone, for he's a thief, and he wants to make me a thief. And if He loved any on us He'd never let us be drove to thievin' and beggin'. Folks say as Davy's gone a-beggin'. No, God loves rich folks, may be; but He don't care a rush for poor folks."

"I can't tell how it is," moaned Mrs. Fell, "only it's a comfort to me to say 'God is love,' and make believe it's true. And my Davy 'll never be a thief, Roger--never! If folks do say he's gone a-beggin', they can't say worse of him. Ah, I wish he'd only come!"

But though she and Bess sat up till long after midnight, and until every inmate of the overcrowded tenement had returned to their miserable dens, and there was not a sound to drown the echo of any footstep coming down the street, there was still no sign of David's coming. Bess fell asleep at last on the floor at her mother's feet; but she kept awake, shivering with cold and pain, and heart-sick with vague terrors as to what should keep the boy away.

As day after day passed on, bringing no tidings of David, the mother's anguish of soul grew almost intolerable. It seemed to overmaster her bodily pain, and render her nearly insensible to it. Every morning she wandered about, asking news of her boy from everybody who had ever known him, until her strength was worn out, and then she would stand for hours, leaning against the wall at the street corner, looking along the road, and straining her eyes to catch some glimpse of him amid the ever-changing stream of people passing by. She could no longer bring herself to stand at her washing-tub, cheating the parish by earning a few extra pence for herself by the toil of her hands. Little by little all that was left of her few possessions found their way to the familiar pawn-shop, till her room was as bare of furniture as it was possible to be, and yet be a human dwelling-place.

There was one treasure she had never parted with, however pressing and bitter her necessities had been through her long years of widowhood. It was the one possession which had been the pride of her heart. This was her wedding-ring, of good solid gold, bought for her, and placed upon her hand by the husband she had lost ten years ago. She had been too careful of it to wear it while at work; but every evening and every Sunday her children had been used to see the golden glitter of it on her finger, and to regard it with a sort of reverential delight. It was the visible sign to them of their dead father, and of the good times their mother could tell them of, but which they had not known themselves. They had gone to bed many a night supperless, that they might keep the mother's ring from the pawn-shop, and run no risk of losing it.

But things had come to such a pass during David's absence, that the ring must go. It was still little worn, not much thinner than when David Fell, the carpenter, had wedded his young wife with it. Next to any grief or calamity befalling her children, this was the sharpest trial Mrs. Fell could undergo. Bess helped her to crawl to the pawnbroker's shop--for she would not trust it even to Bess--and she laid it down on the counter with a pang nearly heart-breaking. The pawnbroker fastened a number to it, gave her a ticket, and pushed a few shillings towards her.

"Take care of it!" she cried with vehement urgency in her tone--" take care of it. I shall redeem it; God in heaven knows I shall redeem it some day. It's God's will!" she sobbed, her dim, eager eyes following it as the pawnbroker opened a drawer, and dropped it carelessly among a heap of pledges similar to it.

As Mrs. Fell, leaning heavily on the arm of Bess, crept homeward after her sorrowful visit to the pawnbroker, they saw an old man, one of their neighbours, making his way with a shambling and limping tread along the uneven pavement before them. The lamps were lit down the narrow and dirty street, and the light fell on the dingy figure of the old man as he passed under them, with his stooping shoulders and his long ragged locks of grey hair falling below his battered and broken hat, round which still clung a little band of black material that had become nearly brown with rain and sunshine. He was a small man, and seemed to have withered and shrunk into a more meagre thinness than when his clothes had been bought, now many years ago. The face under the battered hat was of a yellow brownness and much wrinkled, with shaggy eyebrows hanging over his eyes. There was a gleam in these dim and sunken eyes, as if it was possible for him to smile, but the possibility seldom became a fact. He looked half asleep as he shuffled along, and in a low husky voice he was dreamily crying cresses, but not at all as though he expected any one of his neighbours to spend a penny on his perishable stock.

"There's poor old Euclid!" said Mrs. Fell in a tone of pity, as if she was looking at one whose circumstances were as bad, if not worse, than her-own.

The old man's Christian name was Euclid, his surname Jones, but in the multitude of Joneses the latter had long been lost, and was almost forgotten. He was the son of a village schoolmaster in some quiet spot in Wales, who had called his only child Euclid, with a vague and distant hope of seeing him some day a distinguished mathematical scholar. But the schoolmaster and his wife had both died before little Euclid had fairly mastered the alphabet, and from that time he had lived among the neighbours, now with one and now with another, passing from cottage to cottage, until he was old enough to scare crows and tend pigs. Little learning did Euclid get at these early employments. In course of time he drifted up to London, where he worked on the roads till he was disabled by an accident. He had married a wife who bore him eight children, born and bred under every chance against health and life, and dying, all but one, just as they grew old enough to do something for themselves, after they had tested their father's love and endurance to the utmost. His wife was dead also. He had buried them all in their own coffins, unassisted by the parish, a remembrance which stirred up his downcast heart with a feeling of honest pride whenever it crossed his brain.

Life had brought to Euclid an enigma to solve, stiffer and more intricate than the most abstruse mathematical problem--how to keep himself and his off the parish during life, and how to get buried when all was over without the same dreaded and degrading aid. The problem was but partially solved yet; there still remained his youngest child and himself to die, and be buried.

Euclid turned in at the same door as that to which Mrs. Fell was painfully creeping. He lived in the one attic of the house, having the advantage over Mrs. Fell in more light and fresher air, and in the quietness of a storey to himself. But he possessed few other advantages. His household goods were as poor as hers had been before all that was worth pawning had gone to the pawn-shop. The fireplace consisted of three bars of iron let into the chimney, with a brick on each side for a bob, on one of which stood a brown earthenware tea-pot simmering at the spout, as if the tea had been boiling for some time. There was a bed on the floor close by the handful of fire, and Euclid's first glance fell upon it; but it was empty, for a sickly looking girl of eighteen was sitting on a broken chair before the fire, cowering over it with outstretched hands. She had wrapped herself in an old shawl, and was holding it tightly about her, as though she felt the chill of the November evening; but she smiled brightly when the old man's wrinkled face and dim eyes met her gaze, as he stood in the doorway an instant, looking anxiously and sadly at her.

"Come in, daddy, and shut the door," she said cheerfully. "I'm not bad to-day; but you're late--later than ever. It's gone six, and I thought you would never, never come."

"Folks did not care to buy creases this cold day," he answered, his husky voice striving to soften itself into tenderness; "but Victoria, my dear, you've not waited tea for me?"

"I should think I have," she said, rising from the only chair, and compelling him with all her little strength to sit down on it, while she took an old box for her seat. "I couldn't relish the best o' tea alone at this time o' night and you in the streets, daddy. So we'll have it at once, for it's been made oh! hours ago--at least it's near an hour by the clock. That clock's real company to me, father," she added, looking proudly at a little loud-ticking clock against the wall, which seemed the best and busiest thing in the bare room.

"I ain't got no 'erring for you, Victoria," he said regretfully, "nor nothing else for a relish--nothing save a few creases, and they'd be too cold for your stomach, my dear. If you feel set on anything, I'll take a penny or two from our little store, you know. It's all quite safe, isn't it, my dear?"

"Yes, yes," she answered, a shadow flitting across her face for a moment; "you needn't never be afeard of that not being safe. But I'm not set on anything, daddy."

"How much is it now, Victoria?" he inquired, his eyes glistening a little as he listened eagerly to her reply.

"It's two pound sixteen shilling and ninepence three farthings," she answered, without hesitation.

"I take good care of it."

"I think we shall do it, Victoria," he said, with an air of satisfaction; "and after that, my dear, there will be nobody but me, and I'm not afeard but I'll save enough for that. No, no; I shouldn't like any on us to die like a scamp, on the parish, and be buried in a parish coffin."

Victoria had been reaching down the two cracked cups and the loaf of bread from a corner cupboard, and now she stood for a moment looking wistfully into the fire, her pale thin face flushed a little into almost delicate beauty. Under the pillow on which she rested her head every night, and on which it-lay many a long hour of the weariful day, there was always hidden a precious little store of money, slowly accumulating by a few pence at a time--the fund that was to pay for her own coffin and the other costs of her poor funeral. She had made a shroud of coarse calico for herself, and kept it carefully ready against the time it would be needed. There was no question in her mind or her father's that this fund would be needed, probably before the next summer came. Her doctor, who was a druggist living in the next street, assured her that good living, and better clothing, and warmer lodging were all she needed; but he-might as well have ordered her to the south of France for the winter. It was Euclid's chief anxiety now that the sum should grow as fast as possible, lest an unusually severe winter might hasten on the necessity for it. And to Victoria it was a matter of as much interest and care as to him, so often did she reckon up the cost of a coffin and a grave, and count over the money provided to procure them for her. She thought of it again as she stood looking into the fire, and saw as vividly and fleetly as a flash of lightning her own funeral passing down the narrow, common staircase, with the children trooping after it, but only her old and weeping father following as mourner. She stooped down and kissed him, as if to comfort him beforehand for the grief that was to come.

"Is anythink ailin' you, Victoria?" he inquired in as gentle a tone as he could lower his voice to.

"Nothin' fresh, daddy," she answered; "only you'll be lonesome when I'm gone."

"Ay, ay," said Euclid. "It'll be a dark shop wi'out you, my dear."

He said no more, but sat slowly rubbing his hands up and down his legs before the fire, while his memory travelled back over the twenty-five years that had passed since he was a strong man, able and willing to work hard and to live hard for the sake of his wife and children. Victoria saw him counting his children on his fingers, as he huskily muttered their names. He seemed to see them all, his boys and girls, who were gone out of this troublesome world down into the dark secret of the grave; they were all living in his memory. And his wife, too, who had trodden the same strange yet familiar road eighteen years ago. He had buried them all, and had never once taken a penny from the parish. His withered face lit up as the thought crossed his mind.

"Victoria," he said, as if this recollection had reminded him of Mrs. Fell, "there's a mort o' trouble downstairs in the ground-floor back. There's Mrs. Fell as bad off or worse than us, though she do take parish pay. There's no luck in parish money, I know; but she was dead beat, I s'pose. I saw her comin' back from the pawnshop, and she looked like death. There's her boy David away, and nobody knows where he's gone to, and she's almost heartbroke. I took the liberty o' noticin' and there's not a scrap o' fire in their room. So, Victoria, my dear, if you didn't mind it, we might ask her up here a bit when we've done our tea. There's not enough for all, or we'd ask her to come up for her tea. But she's got no fire, and we have, and four of us will be warmer than two, if you didn't mind it."

"Mind it, daddy?" repeated Victoria. "I'd be right glad, if she'll come."

Many a time had Victoria glanced longingly into Mrs. Fell's room, as she passed the door, and wished she would call out and invite her in. But Mrs. Fell had felt herself in a superior position to Euclid--a laundress being surely of a higher social standing than a water-cress seller, to say nothing of living on the ground-floor instead of the attic--and she had taken but little notice of Euclid's girl amid the constantly changing lodgers who inhabited the house. Bess was better known to Victoria; and David had many a time shown himself friendly, and run errands for her when she was too poorly to go out herself. To-night she could not swallow a morsel after her father's suggestion. As soon as tea was over and the cups and tea-pot put away, with every token of their poor meal, Euclid went downstairs to carry his invitation in person, whilst Victoria arranged an empty box or two to serve as seats about the fire, upon which she put another tiny shovelful of coals. Her colour came and went fitfully, as she heard Mrs. Fell's slow footstep mounting the steps leading to their attic, followed by her father and Bess, and she received them shyly, but gladly, at the door.

"It's very kind on you and Mr. Euclid, I'm sure," panted Mrs. Fell, with the ghost of a smile on her face, "and I take it neighbourly, and if there's anything as me and Bess can do--"

"Please come and sit down in the chair," said Victoria, interrupting her easily, for she was still struggling for breath. She was soon seated in the chair, which was placed in front of the fire, whilst Euclid sat on one side on an old box, with Bess and Victoria opposite on another. The flickering flame of the small fire shone upon their faces, and was the only light by which they saw each other. But in a few minutes they felt almost like old friends.

"She's the last I've got," said old Euclid to Mrs. Fell, nodding at Victoria, who was talking to Bess "her mother died on her, when she were born eighteen years ago. She were too weak to get the better on it, and she had to go. I'd five little children when she died. Victoria's got her complaint," he went on, in a lower tone, "and she's the last out o' eight on them. Boys and gals, they're all gone afore me."

"It's His will as knows best, Mr. Euclid," said Mrs. Fell, with a heavy sigh.

"I s'pose it is," replied Euclid. "I hope He knows, for I'm sure I don't. I've had no time for thinkin' of nothink but how to keep off the parish. Not as I'd say a word agen a woman takin' parish pay; a poor weakly woman like you. But it 'ud be a sore disgrace for a man to come on the parish, even for his buryin'".

Mrs. Fell sighed again, and sat looking into the red embers of the fire sadly, as if she was seeing again the bright days of her married life.

"I never lost nobody save my poor David, my husband, I mean," she said, "and by good luck he were in a buryin' club, and they gave him a very good funeral; a hearse, and a mournin' coach for me and the two children, and plumes! But there'll be nobody save the parish to bury me; for Bess is only a child, and David's gone."

"Where's he gone to?" asked Victoria.

"He went out on a little journey nigh upon a month ago," she answered, "and we've never heard a word of him since he said 'Good-bye, mother.' He's never come back again. Somethink's happened to him I know; for he's always that good to me and Bess, you couldn't think! I'm frettin' after him all the while more than I can tell; it's wastin' me away. But it's God's will, as good folks say; and there's none on us as can fight agen Him."

"And Bess says you've been forced to part wi' your weddin'-ring," Victoria replied, with a shy look of sympathy.

The tears welled up into Mrs. Fell's eyes, and Bess bowed her head in shame. For the first evening in her life when she had no work to do, the poor woman felt that her finger had lost its precious sign of her married life. She might almost as well have been an unmarried woman; one of those wretched creatures on whom she had always looked down with honest pride, and a little hardness. She laid her right hand over her undecorated finger, and looked back into Victoria's sympathising face with an expression of bitter grief.

"I'll work till I drop to get it back," cried Bess, with energy.

"I wish my missis were alive now," said Euclid. "I'm always a wishin' it; but she were a good woman, and she knew summat more about God than most folks; and about Him as died for us. I never was a scholar, but she could read, ay, splendid! and she knew a mort o' things. She taught me a lot, and I remembered them long enough to teach Victoria some of 'em. Victoria, my dear, there's them verses as was your mother's favourites; them as I taught you when you was little. I've forgot 'em myself, Mrs. Fell; but she's got them all right and straight in her head, and she says them back to me now my memory's gone. Sometimes I think it's her mother a sayin' of 'em.

'The Lord,' you know, my dear."

Victoria's face flushed again, and her voice trembled a little as she began to speak, whilst Bess fastened her dark eyes eagerly upon her; and Euclid and Mrs. Fell, with their careworn and withered faces turned straight to the fire, nodded their heads at the close of each verse as if uttering a silent Amen.

"The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
"He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.
"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."

It was quite dark at night when the prison van containing David and other convicted offenders reached the gaol to which they were committed. As yet he was still feeling bewildered and confused, and the sound of heavy doors clanging after him as he passed along them, and the long narrow passages through which he was led, only served to heighten his perplexity. He had hardly ever been within walls, except those of the poor house which had been his home as long as he could remember; and the prison appeared immeasurably large, as he dragged his weary footsteps along the stone flagging of the corridors. The spotless cleanliness of both floor and walls seemed also to remove him altogether out of the world with which he was acquainted. The dirt and squalor of the old gaols would have been more homelike to him. By the time his hair had been cropped close to his head, and the prison garb put upon him in the place of his own familiar clothes, stained and tattered with long wear of them, he began to doubt his own identity. Was he really David Fell? Could he be the boy who had hitherto led the freest life possible, roaming about the busy streets, with no person to forbid or to question him? David Fell could not be he who was now locked up, quite alone, in a little cell, dimly lighted by a gas-jet, which itself was locked up in a cage lest he should touch it. Not a sound came to his ears, let him listen as sharply as he could. Where was the old roll and roar of the streets, and the cries of children, and the shrill voices of women, and the din, and tumult, and stir, and life to which he was accustomed? No dream as dreadful as this silence and solitude had ever visited him.

For a long while he could not go to sleep, though his previous night in the police station had been one of wakefulness. His hammock was comfortable, more comfortable than any bed he had ever slept on; and his prison rug was warm. But the very comfort and warmth brought his mother to his mind, his mother and little Bess. What were they doing now? Were they shivering on their chard mattress, under their threadbare counterpane, which was all that was left to them to keep out the night's chill? Perhaps they were looking out for him. What day was it? Was it not Saturday to-day? And he had promised to be home on Saturday!

Oh! how different it would all have been if he had only escaped being caught! He would have been at home by this time; and now they could have had a bit of fire in the grate, and something to make a feast of as they sat round it, whilst he told the story of his wanderings, and tried to describe all the rich, good folks who had been kind to him. Or if the magistrate had taken away all the money, and let him go home on his promise never to go begging again, even that would have been nothing to this trouble. He fancied he could see his mother's face, pale yet smiling, as she listened to his danger and his escape from it, and Bess sitting on the floor, with shining eyes and clasped hands, hearkening eagerly to every word. Why had they sent him to gaol? At last he sobbed himself to sleep; but all through the night might be heard, if there had been an ear to hear, the heavy deep-drawn sob of the boy's overwhelmed heart.

He was awakened early in the morning, and briefly told what he must do before quitting his cell. Then he ate his breakfast alone in the dreary solitude of the prison walls, and the food almost choked him. It seemed to the boy, used to the wild, utter freedom of the streets, as if his very limbs were fettered, and that he could not move either hand or foot freely. His body did not seem to belong to himself any longer. He was neither hungry nor cold, as he might have been at home, but his head ached and his heart was sore with thoughts of his mother; he was unutterably sick and sad. Cold and hunger were almost like familiar friends to him; but he did not know this faintness and heaviness, this numbness which kept him chained to the prison seat, and made it appear an impossibility that a day or two ago he was rambling about as long as he pleased, and where he pleased, in the wide, free world outside the prison walls. Were there any boys like him still running, and leaping, and shouting out yonder in the autumn sunshine?

It was Sunday morning, and he was left longer than usual to himself. He was taken to the chapel, and sat in his place during the reading of the prayers and the sermon which followed; but not a word penetrated to his bewildered brain. It was much the same on the week-day when he went to school. He knew a little both of reading and writing; but he could not control his attention to make use of what he knew. He said the alphabet stupidly, and wrote his first copy of straight lines badly. He could not bring himself to think of these things. His mind was wandering sadly round the central thought that he was in gaol, and what would become of his mother and little Bess without him.

David was naturally a bright boy, active in mind and body, but he was crushed by the sudden and extreme penalty that had befallen him. He had all along known that the police were "down" upon begging, but it had not entered his mind that he could ever actually get into gaol except for thieving. Among the street lads of his acquaintance many a one had been in for some short term for picking pockets or stealing from the street stalls; but few of these had ever been sentenced to three months' imprisonment. And he had always kept his hands from picking and stealing--the only item of his duty to man which his mother had impressed upon him. He would not have begged if he could have worked; but no man of the hundreds and thousands about him had offered him work, or seen that he was taught to work. Yet here he was for three months in gaol, a lad who had never known any will to guide him but his own untrained and vagrant nature, and his mother's kindly but weak indulgence.

The first glimmer of hope came to him when he was set to learn shoemaking. This was a trade by which he could earn a living--not the trade he would have chosen; his ambition was to be a carpenter like his unknown father--but still honest real work. He received his first lesson in a handicraft with ardour, and sat with an old boot on his knee, picking it to pieces with unwearying industry. If he could only learn as much as to mend his mother's shoes before his term was out! The tears started to his dull, bloodshot eyes, and his lips quivered at the thought of it. He would do his best at any rate to learn this lesson.

The gaol was a large one, and the number of prisoners great. David had been asked if he was a Roman Catholic--a question he did not understand, and could not answer. He was, therefore, classed with the Protestants, and put under the care of the gaol chaplain, who saw him among the other prisoners, and taught him his duty towards God in a class, but who could not find time to give him any individual attention. The chaplain told him, among the rest, that he had broken the laws of his country and of God, and that his punishment was the just reward of his sin. David's ideas of right and wrong were exceedingly limited, and his conscience very uninformed; but he could not believe he had done wrong; and he did not. His mother was starving and he had begged for help. If the laws of his country and of God forbade him to do this, they were in the wrong.

He could not have put his thoughts into words, but they were none the less in his heart--dim, bewildering, and oppressive; and he pondered over them night and day. Very few persons spoke to him, and he was never ready to speak in reply. Those who taught him thought him a blockhead, or fancied that he was at least shamming incapacity and vacancy of mind. As a matter of fact his mind was always absent, except at his cobbling lesson, for he was incessantly brooding over the recollection of his free life, and of the poor desolate home he had been so suddenly torn from.

David had no idea of writing to his mother, or hearing from her. No such thing as a letter reaching them, or being written in their home, had ever occurred within his memory. The policeman was a much more frequent visitor than the postman in their street. Yet he longed for her to know where he was. Day after day he wondered what had happened to her and Bess, and knew they were wondering and fretting about him. The only comfort he had, the only miserable spark of hope, was in thinking he should know how to mend their shoes when he went home.

It was, therefore, with a sudden burst as of sunshine that he learned one day that prisoners might write to their friends once in three months. The schoolmaster gave him the writing materials, and he took unwearied pains over a letter to his mother. The sheet of note-paper contained the address of the gaol, and under it David wrote, in his crooked, ill-formed characters, as follows:-

"Dear Mother,--I was took up for begging, and sent to jal, and I'm lernin' to mend shoes. Don't yu fret about me. I luv yu and Bess. They'll let me out in 3 months, and I'll mend yure shoos. I've kep my hands from pickin' and steelin' as muther ses. God bless you. From david fell yure luvin' son."

He slept that night more soundly than he had ever done before within the prison walls, and dreamed pleasant dreams of working for his mother, and buying her and little Bess all they needed with the money he had earned.

When Mrs. Fell and Bess bade Euclid and Victoria good-night, and went downstairs to their own room, they felt cheered and comforted by the neighbourliness they had received. Bess was ready to declare Victoria the prettiest and cleverest girl in the world. As they opened the door they saw a letter lying just within it, which had been slipped through the nick below it, and which was scarcely visible in the darkness. Such an extraordinary event, one which had never befallen them before, filled them with so much astonishment that it was with trembling hands Bess stooped to pick it up. It was a real letter, with a stamp and postmark upon it, though they could hardly believe their own eyes. There was no light in their own room, not even a dim farthing candle to burn, and there was no resource but to carry the strange letter to the gaslight on the stairs, and read it there as quickly and quietly as possible, with the very probable chance of some of their neighbours coming by and watching them inquisitively.

It must be news of David; there was no one else in the world to write to them. Bess could not read writing, and it was no easy task to Mrs. Fell. But as soon as she unfolded the sheet of paper, which was headed by the name of the gaol where he was imprisoned printed plainly upon it, and which she read half aloud before the meaning reached her brain, she uttered a piercing shriek of anguish, which rang through the whole house, and brought every inmate of it running into the passages and upon the staircases. Mrs. Fell was lying in a deep swoon upon the floor, and Bess was kneeling beside her, calling to her and trying to raise her up. Blackett was the first to reach her, and the half-drunken man gave her a rough push with his foot, uttering a brutal oath.

"You leave her alone!" cried old Euclid, hurrying downstairs, and confronting Blackett with a courage that astonished himself, when he came to think of it; "you leave Mrs. Fell be! She's been spendin' the evenin' with me and my daughter, and I'll take care on her. You ain't no man if you'd kick a poor sickly woman like her. You're a coward if you touch her again, and I say so. Ain't he?" he shouted in his hoarse voice, as he turned with a quivering face and excited gestures to the cluster of neighbours gathered about them.

"Ay, he is!" cried the crowd with so unanimous a voice that even Blackett was cowed by it, and, contenting himself with muttering some bad language, retreated to his own place. Two or three of the neighbours helped Euclid to carry the poor woman into her room. Even to them, used to destitution as they were, it seemed bare of everything. There was no seat left, unless a few bricks, picked up in the street, could be called seats; and they had to lay her down upon the bare sacking of the bedsteads, from which the bed and clothing had all disappeared. Euclid gazed round him with a strange pity stirring at his heart, mingled with a sense of superior comfort in his own circumstances. He felt almost like a rich man.

"This is bad, worse than any on us," he said; "and she might ha' been my widow, if I'd died first, instead of my wife. She might ha' been the widow of any one on you. I vote as we make a little collection for her in th' house, and I'll begin with a shillin', and that's more than I've earned to-day. Some on you can do it easier than me."

"She gets four shillings and eightpence, parish pay, every Tuesday," objected one of the women who stood by.

"And pays arf-a-crown a week rent," replied Euclid; "it's short-commons after that."

" She's always a-hungered," sobbed Bess; "nothin' can satisfy mother."

"She ought to go into the house, where she'd have medicine and everythink," said another voice; "the orficer says so."

"Who says she ought to go into the house?" asked Euclid, lifting up his head and looking round him with eyes almost bright with indignation. "She as is a decent, hard-workin' woman, and a honest man's widow! She's not the sort as goes into the house. We know who goes there--bad women as no decent man 'ud look at, and drunken women, and swearin', cursin' women. There couldn't be worse folks in hell, and I'd as lief say she ought to go to hell; the company 'ud be as good. Don't nobody speak o' goin' to the house while I'm by."

Old Euclid had always been regarded by his neighbours as a quiet, timid old man, who hadn't a word to cast at a dog. There was something so unusual both in his vehement words and his excited gestures that, one by one, they slunk out of the miserable room in silence, leaving him and Bess to the task of bringing back the fainting woman to consciousness. She was still clutching the letter convulsively in her fingers, but as Bess opened them to chafe the palms of her cold hands, it fluttered down upon the floor. Euclid picked it up, and carried it to the light of the candle which somebody had brought in and left upon the chimney-piece.

"Who's it from?" asked Bess, anxiously. "Is it from Davy?"

"Ah! 'David Fell, your lovin' son,'" he read; "but it comes from gaol! He's in gaol!"

Euclid's grey old head dropped, and his voice sank into a hoarse murmur. It was no longer a wonder to him that Mrs. Fell had fallen into a death-like swoon. The workhouse was terrible; but the gaol was a lower depth still. He stood silent for a few minutes thinking. David had always been a sort of favourite with him; he liked his bright boyish face, and his merry whistle as he stepped briskly about. And the lad had often carried his basket for him, and shouted "Cresses" with his clear young voice, when his own throat was dry and husky with crying them all day about the streets. But now David Fell was a gaol-bird!

Presently there came to his ear the feeble murmur of his name from David's mother, and he hastened to her side, looking down on her ashy face with a strange gentleness in his sunken eyes.

"Please read it up loud," she said, in a laborious whisper, as if she had scarcely strength to form the words with her trembling lips. Euclid read the few lines in a measured voice, giving every word its fullest length; and then he folded it up again, and laid it down near the mother's hand.

"It's only for beggin'!" he cried, "three months for beggin' for his mother! God help us all! There's something wrong somewhere! Them justices must have hearts like mine, I s'pose, yet they sent Davy to gaol for three months for beggin' for his mother. If they'd only take the time for to see what they'd done! But there, they don't take the time; or they'd never punish a lad like David, the son of a decent, hard-workin' woman, as was left a widow with two children to keep. God help us all!"

"It's only for beggin'!" murmured Mrs. Fell, with tears streaming down her cheeks, "only for beggin'!"

"Don't you take on too much," urged Euclid, "he'll come home all right, and I'll look after the lad for you."

But it was hard for Mrs. Fell to comfort herself about David. It was no uncommon event for boys in their street to get into gaol; but it was almost always for stealing, and she knew no one would believe that David had been sent there for begging only. How Blackett would glory and triumph in it! His elder sons were known to be thieves, and he was constantly pushing and urging Roger towards the same course, in the hope of getting him off his hands. Yet it had never once crossed her mind that her own boy Davy could ever be in prison. His father had been an honest, industrious artisan, priding himself on never touching his neighbour's goods by so much as a finger; and she had not thought of David failing, under any stress of temptation, to follow in his steps. David was no thief; but still he was in gaol! She kept murmuring to herself, "It's only for beggin'!" But was the bitterness lessened to her that her only son had met with such a penalty for so slight a fault? He would come out into the world branded as if he had been a thief, with the shame of a gaol clinging to him through the rest of his life. And she herself had always held up her head among the neighbours. How could she bear to be pointed at as the mother of a gaol-bird? The pain was more than she could bear.

Euclid and Victoria were very good to her in her fresh trouble, and helped her as far as their means allowed; the little store of money for Victoria's burial suffering thereby. Many of the neighbours, too, thought of her, and brought her from time to time a morsel of their own not over-abundant food. Even Blackett offered her help, which she turned away from with a sick heart. She was not quite so starved and friendless as she had been before her desperate circumstances were discovered, but she felt more heartbroken, and there was none to comfort her. Victoria repeated her hymns and verses to her, but they seemed words without meaning in her great sorrow. She had set before her one aim, to see her children start in life, honest and blameless, as their father had been before them. Night and day she had toiled and denied herself to this end. She had given herself no rest, but had struggled on through grievous pain and in great darkness of spirit; and she had failed. The hard battle had been fought, and she was conquered.

"Davy 'ud have made a good man," she moaned to herself, through the long, sleepless nights, as she thought of him in gaol; "he'd have growed up like his father, if I could ha' kep' up another two-three years. It's come too soon on me. But now he's got a sully and a stain on him as 'll never wash off, live as long as live he may. He's been in gaol, folks 'll say. And whatever 'ill become o' Bess if Davy goes wrong? He'd have kep' her up, if he'd been a good man. Oh, Lord! he'd have made a good man, only for this! And now he's in gaol!"

Bess was all that was left to her, and she could scarcely bear to let her go out of her sight. Blackett, who swore and raged at every one else, was beginning to speak kindly to Bess, and this filled the heart of the poor dying mother with unutterable terror. She had often been proud of her child's dark eyes and pretty hair, and thought of her own face when David Fell was courting her.

Oh! if Davy was but at home again, always with Bess, unconsciously shielding her from untold dangers! Suppose even that she died before Davy's time was up! If she should never, never see her boy's face again! And to leave Bess alone, quite alone!

It would have been a hard and bitter sorrow to leave her children, if she had had a good hope of their doing well; but oh! how infinitely harder and more bitter it was to die while David was in gaol, and when Blackett was speaking kindly to little Bess!

Once she tried to say, "It's God's will, and He knows best," but something seemed to stop her. She could not utter the words, even to her own heart.

Bess had not forgotten that the redemption of her mother's wedding-ring rested upon her, and that she had pledged herself to get it out of pawn. She tried in various ways to get some work to do, but she had neither strength nor skill to make her work valuable. At last she took council with Victoria, who proposed to her to go out selling water-cresses like her father; and he offered to take her with him to the market where he bought his daily supply, and start her on a beat of her own, apart from his, as he could not afford to divide his customers and his profits. A few pence, a few halfpence even, would set her up in this line of business; and with luck she might earn sufficient to keep herself and redeem the ring. But it must be done in secret lest the relieving officer should hear of it, and her mother's allowance from the parish be reduced or perhaps taken off altogether.

It may be pleasant to rise at four o'clock in June, and quitting the thick and nauseous atmosphere of the overcrowded and unventilated dwelling-place, to escape into the sweet dewy freshness of the early morning, which, even in the streets, is scented with the breath of country hay-carts and blossoming gardens; but four o'clock on a winter's morning, when Bess hurriedly dressed herself, without a light, in the thin and tattered clothes which were all she had, and thrust her naked feet into her mother's old boots; and, kissing her mother, who must lie still and lonely till she came back, stepped out into the half slush, half frost of the pavement, and the biting air--this was a sharp test of her endurance. But Euclid was waiting for her with his basket, and she trudged along at his side through the slush and the frost, carrying an old battered tea-tray a neighbour, who could be trusted with the secret, had lent her the night before. It was nearly three miles to the market. Early as the hour was, and dark as midnight still, life had begun again at the East End; and many a shivering fellow-being, shuffling along the slippery pavement, and maintaining a sombre silence, passed them like ghosts. Bess had never been out at this hour before, and she kept close to Euclid's side.

The old man was silent; for he felt put out by the presence of a companion. For twenty-five years, ever since he had recovered partially from the accident that disabled him as a labourer, he had taken this walk alone, through summer and winter; and it was bewildering to him to hear the light footsteps of Bess pattering beside him. He had so long lived altogether without intercourse with his neighbours, that he was surprised, and not altogether pleased, to find himself taking an interest in Mrs. Fell, and David, and Bess. Might not such an interest come between him and the sole aim of his life? For if he yielded too much to the stirrings of compassion and pity in his heart, some danger might arise to his slowly accumulated hoard, now lying safely under Victoria's head.

Yet Euclid felt that he could not stand by and see his neighbour die of starvation under his very eyes. No, no; that could never be. He glanced at Bess, as they passed beneath a lamp, and caught a half-smile of trustfulness in him shining in her eyes, like the look of his little children, dead long ago, who had been used to run to meet him when they heard his foot on the stairs. They were all gone to heaven now, where his wife was. He had no idea of heaven, beyond a vague fancy dwelling in his brain that there would be somewhere, out of the world or in the world he did not know, a little cottage on a hillside, such as the early home he dimly remembered, where they would all live together again, and where there would be no winter, and no more hunger or sorrow; no parish pay, and no workhouse. His lost wife would be young again, and all his children little ones; and there would be a garden for him to work in, lying round the cottage. That was Euclid's heaven.

He was still dreaming of it when they reached the market, and joined a crowd of old folks and young children waiting for the gates to be opened. It was not yet five o'clock, and the yellow glare of a few gas lamps shed a dim light upon the scene. The crowd was very quiet and subdued. All who were there were feeble folk, and did not care to waste their strength in noise and pushing. As each old person or little child came, they took their place as near to the gate as they could get, and most of them sank into silent waiting. The poorest of the decent poor were there; those who were willing to struggle to the bitter end to earn an honest living, and keep out of the workhouse. Euclid did as the rest, and with Bess beside him, stood in patient muteness till he could make his purchases for the day.

As soon as the gates were opened there was a quiet crush through them. Euclid took more care in buying a stock of cresses for Bess than for himself; though he was fastidious in his choice, passing from hamper to hamper, and peering closely at the green leaves to detect any specks upon them. As soon as his purchases were made, he hurried Bess away to the steps of a church close by, where he showed her how to make up her bunches, and slung the old tray round her neck by a bit of cord he drew out of his pocket.

"Now, we must be as sharp as needles and pins," he said. "I've heard somewhere of a early bird as picked up a early worm. Folks 'ill be gettin' their breakfasses soon, and we must be in time to catch 'em at it. Don't you waste your time along the bettermost streets, Bess, but stick to the courts, and the mewses, and the streets where workin' men live. Rich folks ain't thinkin' o' gettin' out o' bed yet; and they don't eat creases for breakfast, but ham and eggs, and hot things. Mewses are good places in general. Walk pretty slow, two mile an hour; and keep your eye on the doors and windows for fear somebody's beckonin' at you. There now! I'll stand at the end o' this here street, and hearken how you can cry 'Creases! Fresh water-creases!' till you're out o' my sight."

Euclid stood watching Bess, with her trayful of cresses, as she paced slowly along the street, her clear, pleasant voice singing, rather than crying, the familiar words. Then he turned away with a heavy sigh. His own voice sounded husky and hollow in his ears as he shambled along his customary beat, drawling mournfully, "Cre-she! cre-she!" He felt an older man than usual; as though some additional burden of years had suddenly fallen upon his bent shoulders and bowed-down head. Yet he was only in his sixtieth year, and there was much work and much power of endurance left in him still. He had never quite starved as much as he could; and his old clothing had never been as utterly tattered as they might be. But he saw depths of poverty below even him; and for once-his heart felt heavy enough to sink him and Victoria into those lowest deeps.

"The parish!" he muttered to himself, half aloud, as he rested his dry throat for a minute or two, "the parish! And be parted from her! Not bury Victoria in her own coffin, like the rest of 'em! The parish! God help these old legs o' mine!

As if some new strength had been breathed into him, Euclid started on again, crying his street cry with more energy than before; the thought of the parish having run like a stimulant through his whole frame. He had more luck than usual, and sold so many bunches of cresses that he felt justified in buying one of the best of Yarmouth bloaters, which he chose with close cautiousness, as if he was difficult to please, at a shop he passed on his way home. It was for a relish for Victoria's tea, more than for himself. He had made as much as two shillings by his day's toil and his ten miles' tramp through the slushy streets; and after he had taken enough for the day's food and rent, there was as much as ninepence to put by.

"Let us look over our little store," he said, when their leisurely tea was ended.

He was counting up the silver and copper coins on the empty soap-box, turned on end, which served as a table when it was not wanted as a seat, when a low knock was heard at the door. There was neither lock nor latch upon it, the sole fastening being a stick passed through a staple and hold-fast within. But there was no other room in the roof, and the steep ladder-like staircase was seldom trodden by any one but themselves. Euclid made haste to gather the money into the handkerchief that usually held it, before Victoria opened the door. But Bess, who was the untimely visitor, had already seen the heap of coins through a chink in the old door, and heard their jingle as Euclid swept them out of sight. She stood thunderstruck on the door-sill, gazing in with large wide-open eyes.

"What is it, Bess?" asked Victoria.

"Oh! mother's sent me up to say as I've had good luck," she stammered, "and it's thanks to you, Mr. Euclid; and oh! please may I go again tomorrow morning?"

Ay, child," answered Euclid shortly.

Bess went downstairs with a far slower step than she had gone up. Never in her life had she seen so much money at one time, as when she had put her eye to the chink in the door, and peeped in on her friends. It seemed to her as if the whole end of the soap-box had been covered with it. Mr. Euclid, in spite of his old clothing and his poor attic, was then a rich man! If such riches could be made by selling water-cresses, then she too was on the high road to be rich. Already, to-day, she had earned more money than she had ever earned before; and her mother had smiled for the first time since David went out begging, when she poured the halfpence into her lap. Like Euclid she had trudged through the mud of the partially frozen streets for nine or ten miles, besides her walk to the market; and her limbs were weary, and her throat somewhat tired. But her heart was very light. Then the wonderful sight of heaps of money on Euclid's table had dazzled her. Why had they never thought of this trade before? A thousand pities it was; for if they had begun early enough she and David might now have had heaps of money too, like Euclid and Victoria.

Bess was up again before four o'clock in the morning, and was waiting for Euclid when he came downstairs. She was eager to be away, making her fortune. By-and-by Euclid grew used to her company, and liked to hear her talk, as she tripped along by his side. Morning after morning, through darkness and frost, snow and fog, the greyheaded man and the young girl started off on their toilsome tramp; the one with the uncomplaining fortitude of old age, the other with the hopeful courage of youth.

"It 'ill not be such a lonesome shop when I'm gone now, father," said Victoria, one day.

"Why so, Victoria, my dear?" he asked.

"There's Bess," she answered, smiling, but somewhat sadly," you'll take to her, daddy. You two 'ud be two lonesome ones if you didn't take to one another. Mrs. Fell's very near her end, and I am, p'rhaps."

"Do you feel worse, Victoria?" he inquired anxiously.

"Not worse," she said, "but it's so long, the winter is, and there's so much dark, and I lie here, doin' nothin'. If it wasn't for mother's verses and hymns, I don't know what I'd do. I've been sayin' one of 'em all day."

"Which is it, my dear?" he asked.

Victoria's voice fell into a low and solemn tone as she said these words:--

"There is a house, not made with hands,
Eternal and on high;
And here my spirit waiting stands,
Till God shall bid it fly."

"Ay! she were always a sayin' them lines," Euclid murmured softly, "afore you was born, my dear."

"There's enough money to pay for my buryin' now, isn't there, father?" asked Victoria.

"To be sure there is, my dear, lots enough," he answered, "and a bit o' black for Bess, if that 'ill be any comfort to you."

"She's strong, and can help you to get a livin'", observed Victoria, almost joyously, "and there'll be somebody to see as you have a coffin of your own too, daddy. I'm glad to think you'll take to Bess, when I'm gone."

"My work 'ill be done then," said Euclid. "I promised your mother what I'd do, and I've a'most done it. Then I'm ready to go. It's a queer shop this world is!

In three calendar months after David Fell was committed to gaol for begging he was released, and sent out again to the old life. He had been regularly supplied with food, kept from the cold of the wintry days and nights, and properly exercised with a careful regard to his health. He had never had three months of so much physical comfort before; and he had grown a good deal both in size and strength. Moreover, he had been diligently taught in school, and could read and write very much better, and with more ease than when he had written his short letter to his mother. He had learned cobbling, and could mend a pair of boots quite creditably. The governor of the gaol enumerated these advantages to him as he gave him a few words of parting counsel.

"Now, my lad," he continued, "don't let me seeyou here again, or hear of you being in trouble elsewhere. This is the second time you've been in gaol--"

"Please, sir," interrupted David, with energy, 'I never was in gaol before. It was another boy, not me. I've done nothin' worse than beggin'".

"Don't go away with a lie on your tongue," said the governor sternly; "it's a sad thing to break the laws of your country, but it's worse to break God's laws. 'Thou shalt not steal!' 'Thou shalt not lie!' are His laws. 'Thou shalt not beg,' is your country's law. Keep them in mind and you'll not get into trouble again."

David heard the prison-gate close behind him, leaving him free again in the open streets, with an odd feeling of strangeness and timidity mingled with his delight. The other prisoners, released at the same time, quickly vanished out of sight, as if they did not care to be seen under the gaol walls. But David lingered, half bewildered and half fascinated, gazing up at the strong, grim edifice, with its massive doors, and small, closely barred windows. It had been his home for three months. He was no longer a stranger to it, or its ways. If he should ever come there again, he could fall at once into its customs and rules, and would need very little, if any, instruction from its warders. Just now it seemed more familiar and less formidable to him than the narrow, dirty, squalid street, where his former neighbours lived, and his mother, and little Bess.

He had some miles to go, and it was almost dusk when he reached his own neighbourhood. But though he was stronger and better fitted for labour than when he left it three months ago, he did not turn boldly into the street, whistling some gay tune as he marched along, and calling aloud to this neighbour and that, ready for all sorts of boyish pranks, and equally ready to render little acts of help and kindness to any one who needed them. He waited till night fell, and then went slinking down close to the walls, and keeping as much in the shadow as possible. Blackett's door was open, and he dare not face Blackett. He had always held up his head high above Blackett's sons, except Roger, and he knew both father and sons hated him for it. Did the neighbours know that he had been in prison? If they did not, his closely cropped head, with the hair growing like short fur all over it, would betray him at once.

He stood in a dark corner over against the house, watching its inmates pass to and fro. There was old Euclid going in, with his empty basket; it was quite empty, so he must have had a good day; and presently he saw the glimmer of a candle in the garret window. What would Victoria say, when she saw him, and his prison crop, for the first time? He was almost as much afraid of her and Euclid as he was of Blackett. Could he make them believe that he had only been in gaol for begging? Surely they would not be too hard on him for that! Yet he felt the old glow of shame-again at the thought of going out to beg.

His mother would believe it, and know it to be-true. He was longing for the sight of her, but he dare not go past Blackett's open door. The tears smarted under his eyelids as he thought of how soon now he was going to see her. Then a dark dread crossed his mind. He had been away for three months, and suppose his mother should be dead! Oh! if that could be! Dead and buried, and he never to see her again!

At length Blackett came out, and staggered up the street towards the enticing spirit vaults at the corner. Now was the moment. He crept cautiously to the entrance, and then darted through the lighted passage, almost at a bound. In an instant his hand was on the latch and flinging open his mother's door, he rushed in panting, and closed it after him as if fearful of being pursued. He could hardly see for a moment, though there was a candle in the room. But when he looked round, there was his mother lying on the bare sacking of her miserable bed, her face pale as death, and her sunken eyes, with a famished, ravenous expression in them, fastened eagerly on him. They told a tale of terrible suffering. It seemed to David as if he had almost forgotten his mother's face while he had been in gaol, and that now he saw it afresh, with all the story of her pain and anguish printed upon it. He stood motionless, staring at her; and she lifted herself upon the bed, and held out her arms to him.

"Oh, Davy! my boy! Davy!" she cried, "come-to me! come quickly!"

With a deep groan, such as is rarely wrung from the lips of a man, the boy flung himself into his mother's arms: and the mother bore the shock of agony it caused her without a cry.

This was her son, her first-born. He was the baby who had first lain on her bosom, now so tortured with ceaseless pain, and who had filled her whole heart with love and joy. She could recollect how his father had looked down upon them both, with mingled pride and shyness. She almost forgot her pain in the rapture of fondling him once again. Her shrivelled, wasted hand, whose fingers were drawn up with long years of toil, stroked his poor head, with its prison crop of hair, where the baby's flaxen curls had grown; and her lips were pressed again and again to his face. She could not let him go.

"I was doin' nothin' but beg for you, mother," he sobbed out at last.

"I know, Davy, I know," she said, sinking back exhausted, but still holding fast his hand, and devouring him with her eyes, "it couldn't be no sin, God in heaven knows. You'll make a good man yet, in spite of all, like your father, Davy. You're as like him as like can be!"

She lay looking at him with a smile on her face. So much care had been taken of him in the gaol that he looked more like a man, or at least gave more promise of growing into a strong, capable man like his father, than he had ever done whilst he starved on scanty fare at home. His face, too, had lost its boyish carelessness, and wore an air of thought, almost of gloom, such as sits on most men's faces.

"May be I ought to ha' gone into the House," she said, as her eyes caught sight of David's short, dark hair; "it's bad for folks to say you ever went a-beggin', and was took up for it. But I never knew nobody go into the House as I should like to be with, or have Bess be with. Most of the folks as have gone out of our street 'ud shame the bad place itself; and it 'ud be worse than dyin' to live among 'em all day, and all night too. I always said, and I promised father when he was dyin', I swore a oath to him, as long as I could stand at a tub I'd never mix myself up with such a lot, or let his boy and girl go among 'em. But may be I ought to ha' given in instead of lettin' you go a-beggin'", she added, with a profound sigh.

"No, no, mother; don't you fret about me," answered David. "Why! I've learnt a trade in--there," he said, avoiding the name gaol, "and I know how to work now, and I'll keep you and Bess. Sometimes I used to think, s'pose they'd only taught me outside, without goin' inside that place! I'd have learnt it with more heart, and never got the bad name as folks will give me now. I can mend boots and shoes prime; and I can read and write almost like a scholar. But I shall never get over being in there!"

"Oh! you will, you will, my lad," cried his mother, faintly and sadly.

"No, I can't never forget it," he said, with a look of shame and sorrow on his face. "Father's name was always good, and mine never can be. Mother, if they'd only tried to find out if I spoke true! But they didn't take no time or trouble. I didn't know where I was afore the magistrate said, 'Three months!' and they bundled me away, as if I weren't worth taking trouble about. I'm a gaol-bird now."

"No, no," sobbed his mother.

"That's what the neighbours 'ill call me," he went on, "and Blackett 'ill crow over me. They'll never believe I was only beggin'. I feel as if I couldn't hold my head up to face them; or Bess. Where's Bess, mother?"

But as he spoke Bess came in, and with a cry of delight ran to him, and flung her arms round his neck. He could not rid himself of those clinging arms, and he burst into a passion of weeping as Bess kissed him again and again.

"They were wicked, cruel people as sent you to gaol, Davy," she repeated, over and over again, "cruel and wicked; cruel and wicked!"

It was some minutes before they could speak to one another in any other words, or before Bess remembered on what errand she had been absent when David came home.

"They can't let us have the ring this evening, mother," she said, after a while. "Mr. Quirk's away till this time to-morrow; and Mrs. Quirk says as she daren't part with any o' the rings without him."

"What ring?" asked David.

"Mother's ring," answered Bess.

"We were forced to part with it, Davy," said his mother, in a pleading tone, as if to justify herself to him. "I'd clemmed myself till I could bear it no longer, and everything else was gone. It was the last time I set foot out o' doors; I carried it myself to Mr. Quirk's, and swore as I'd redeem it. And Bess there has earned money to redeem it, and we thought we'd get it back to-night. But you're come back instead, my lad; and I can bear to go without the ring."

His mother's wedding-ring had been all his life to him a sacred thing; the only sacred thing he knew of. It was blended with all his earliest childish thoughts of his dead father, whom he had never known, but of whom his mother talked so often of an evening when work was done, and she wore the ring, and when the glimmer of it in the dim fire-light made it visible, though almost all else was in darkness. All the inherent superstition and reverence for sacred symbols common to our nature centred for David in his mother's wedding-ring. He knew what straits of gnawing hunger Bess and his mother must have undergone before they would part with it; and his bitterness and heaviness of heart, for he had left gaol in bitterness and heaviness of heart, were increased tenfold by this loss of her ring.

"We'll have it to-morrow," he said, in a stern and passionate voice.

Yet they were on the whole happy that evening: it was so much to be together again. Bess had plenty to tell of her daily tramps through the streets; and David talked of his plans for the future; whilst their mother listened to them, thankful beyond all words to have her boy in her sight once more. Even during the night, when she heard him turning uneasily to and fro on the scanty heap of straw they had managed to get for him to lie on, so hard to him after his comfortable hammock and warm rug in the gaol, her heart felt lighter than it had done for many months. Her poverty continued, her sore pain was not less agonising; but David was at home again, and life was once more dear to her.

Bess was up as usual in the morning, and David would have gone with her but for Euclid. He shrank from meeting any of the neighbours; and if it had been possible he would have remained in-doors till his hair had grown long again. All the day he stayed in the dark, unwholesome room, talking at times with his mother, but generally sitting silent, with his head resting on his hands. The hours seemed endless. Hunger and cold he had borne with courage, and he could do so still; but shame he could not bear. Pride in a good name was the only moral lesson he had been taught; and his good name was gone. His mother had sympathy enough to guess what troubled him, but she did not know how to comfort him. There was a vague indistinct feeling in their minds that he had not forfeited his good name--he had been robbed of it.

At last evening came, and Bess went out again to redeem the precious pledge. Both David and his mother forgot their troubles for a brief space of time as they thought of seeing it shine once more on her hand, so wasted and shrivelled now, and different from the firm young hand that had first worn it. It had been a brand new ring when David Fell bought it--no other would satisfy the proud young artisan--a thick, heavy ring of gold, such as the finest lady in the land might wear.

"It's here, mother!" cried Bess, running in almost breathless, with the small, precious packet in her hand. David lighted the candle, and held it beside his mother, as her trembling fingers unfolded the paper in which it was wrapped. But what was this? A thin, battered ring, worn almost to a thread. No more like the one they all knew so well, than this bare and desolate room was like the pleasant house David Fell had provided for his young wife. Mrs. Fell uttered a bitter cry of disappointment and dread.

"Oh, Davy," she cried, "it isn't mine! it isn't mine!"

In two minutes from that fatal cry of despair, David, panting, bare-headed, nearly mad with passion, stood on the pavement in front of the pawnshop. There was no need to enter it, for Mr. Quirk was pacing to and fro in front of hIs premises, inviting the passer-by to inspect his goods. He was a short, undersized, knavish-looking man. David confronted him with a white face and dilating nostrils, holding out the ring to him.

"It is'nt mother's," he gasped; "you've given Bess somebody else's ring. This ain't mother's ring."

"That's Mary Fell's ring," drawled Mr. Quirk sneeringly, and as coolly as if he had prepared himself for the charge, "as she pledged here to me, two months ago. That's her ring."

"Give me my mother's own ring!" shouted David, every nerve and muscle tingling with all the force and energy he had in him, "give me her ring, you swindling thief!"

"It's Mary Fell's ring," repeated the pawnbroker stubbornly, "and Mary Fell's well known as a thief and a drunkard, and something worse!

Scarcely had the words against his mother's good name been pronounced, before David had flung himself, in his rage and the unusual vigour he had brought from gaol, upon the puny man, who was unprepared for the attack. The boy and the man were not ill-matched, and blow after blow was given. The battered old ring fell to the pavement, and was trodden under their feet. A circle of spectators gathered as if by magic about them in an instant, none of whom cared to interrupt the sport such a contest afforded. There were cries and cheers of encouragement on all hands, until the combatants fell, David uppermost.

"What's all this about?" inquired a policeman, elbowing his way through the crowd, and calmly looking on for a minute, whilst David still struck hard at his enemy, who was struggling up to his feet. The policeman seized the lad by the collar, and he tried to shake off his hold, as he faced the pawnbroker, blind and deaf with rage.

"Give me my mother's ring!" he shouted.

"I give him in charge," said Mr. Quirk, welcoming the policeman's interference; whilst David felt an awful thrill of despair run through him as he saw whose hand was grasping him. "I was a-doin' nothin', and he up at me like a tiger," added the pawnbroker.

"Ay, he did; I saw him," cried a woman, standing at the pawnshop door; "he's a young gaol-bird; everybody can see that."

It was only too plainly to be seen. David was now standing perfectly still in the policeman's grip--pale and frightened, with a hang-dog air, which told powerfully against him. One of the passers-by, an intelligent, well-dressed mechanic, pressed forward a little, asking, "Why did you meddle with the man? What's this about a ring?" But the policeman checked David's attempts to reply.

"That's no business of mine," he said sharply; "you give this lad in charge?"

He addressed himself to Mr. Quirk, who replied plaintively--"I'm a householder and a ratepayer," he said, "and I give him in charge."

"Then you'll make your defence before the Court," said the policeman to David. "Come along with you!"

David glanced round the cluster of faces hemming him in. Some of them he knew. Blackett was there, grinning triumphantly, and Roger was peeping behind him, half afraid of being caught by his father. Euclid had stopped for a moment, with his basket on his arm, and was looking on with an amazed and puzzled face. David dared not call upon any of them by name, but he cried out, in a lamentable voice which touched and startled many of the careless on-lookers,

"Will somebody tell my mother what's befell me?"

He saw Roger make him a sign that he had heard and would fulfil his request, before he was marched off to the police-station, to pass a night there--no longer a strange and unprecedented occurrence to David.

Bess had set the door of their room a little ajar, and was waiting anxiously for David's return. Her mother had not ceased to sob over her lost ring from the moment when she had caught sight of the worn-out, battered thing which had been exchanged for her own. Her grief was the more keen as she had little hope of David recovering the right one. She had heard of other women having their wedding-rings changed or "sweated," and never being able to right themselves, and she could not bear to think of some other woman, happier than herself, wearing it as her wedding-ring, and prizing it as she had done. A thousand dim memories and inarticulate thoughts centred in the lost ring, none the less real, perhaps, because the poor widow was only an ignorant woman, and could not express her feelings in language. She lay moaning in utter hopelessness and helplessness, knowing too well it was lost for ever. Before even they could expect David back, Roger ran in, breathless and stammering. The candle was still burning, and they could see his agitated face and his excited gestures plainly.

"He's bein' took to gaol again!" he exclaimed, in broken sentences. "I see him all along. He up and at old Quirk as brave as a bulldog. He had him down on the ground in no time. He'd said as you was a thief, and a drunkard, and worse; and David couldn't stand it. I'd ha' had a cut at him too, but he had him down on his back in a moment's time; and he fought for you like a good un!"

"But where is he?" gasped the mother, as her eyes, glistening with terror, turned towards the door, where Bess was standing, as though waiting to let David in and close it safely after him.

"He's took to gaol, you know," answered Roger, 'with an oath such as he had learned when he could first speak. "There was a bobby up afore I could give him warnin', pushin' through everybody; and old Quirk gave him in charge, and they walked him off to the station, to be shut up all night till to-morrow mornin'. And he shouted, 'Somebody tell my mother what's befell me!' And he looked straight at me, and I came off at wunst. Perhaps they'll let him go free in the mornin'!"

But even Roger's unaccustomed eyes could see the deathlike pallor and change that came over the face of David's mother, as she heard what he had to say. She uttered no word or cry, but sank down again on her miserable death-bed, and turned her despairing face to the wall. Bess sent away Roger, and carefully putting out the candle, crept on to the sacking beside her, and laying her arm gently across her, spoke hopefully of David being released, and Quirk punished, as soon as the truth was known. But Mrs. Fell was at last broken-hearted, and answered not a word, even to little Bess, who fell asleep at last, crying softly to herself.

Who can tell how long the hours of that night were? Darkness without, and within the utter blackness of despair. The craving hunger of disease, and the soul's hunger after the welfare of her children! The chilly dew of death, and the icy death-blow dealt to every lingering hope for them! When Bess awoke and bestirred herself early in the morning, her mother still lay speechless, and she dared not leave her. Euclid started on his day's work alone. There was no one she could ask for help; so she set about her little tasks of lighting a handful of fire, and making a cup of tea for her mother, which she could not persuade her to touch. It was a dark and dreary winter's morning; so dark where she was living that she could scarcely see her mother's face.

The afternoon was fast fading into night, another night of misery and despair, when Roger stole softly in and crept gently up to the side of the bed where David's mother lay. Bess was sitting by her, holding her hand closely, as if she could thus keep her in the world where her lot had been so hard. She had not spoken yet, and had scarcely moved since Roger had brought his fatal tidings the night before. Now when her ear caught the sound of his low, awe-struck voice, she opened her eyes once more, and fastened them upon him. He stooped down and spoke to her in a sorrowful whisper.

"He's got three months agen," he said. "Never mind! everybody gets into gaol some time o' their lives!

Mrs. Fell's lips moved tremulously, as the eyelids closed slowly over her dim eyes, which were losing sight of Bess, though she was leaning over her and calling "Mother!"

"He might ha' been a good man like his father! she moaned, with her dying breath.

A parish coffin and a pauper's grave were all the country had to give to the dead mother, whose son, in the ignorance and recklessness of boyhood, had broken the laws twice, and been each time visited with a harsh penalty. "That servant which knew his lord's will and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes." There is Christ's rule. Do we, who sometimes pride ourselves as being the most Christian nation on the face of the earth, abide by that rule?

The mother was buried; and what was to become of Bess? No one was bound to take any care of her. She was old enough to see after herself. There was the workhouse open to her, if she chose to apply for admission; but if she entered it, it would be to be sent out to service as a workhouse girl, in the course of a few weeks or months, untrained and untaught, fit only for the miserable drudgery of the lowest service. There was not strength enough in her slight ill-fed frame to enable her to keep body and soul together at laundry-work, which was the only work she knew anything of. There was no home, however wretched, to give her shelter, if she continued to sell water-cresses in the streets. True, Blackett offered the refuge of his lodgings, and Roger urged her eagerly to avail herself of his father's kindness; but Bess shrank away with terror from the mere thought of it. Blackett had been the object of her daily dread ever since her childhood, and no change in him could inspire her with confidence.

When she came back from following her mother's coffin to its pauper's grave she stole past Blackett's door into the empty room beyond, and sat down, worn out with grief and weariness, on the bedstead where her mother's corpse had been lying for the last three days. She had lived in the room alone with it, and she felt more lonely now that it was gone. Silent and motionless as it had been, with its half-closed eyelids, and the ashy whiteness of its face gleaming even in the dusk, it had been a companion to her, and she had not been afraid of it. Now it was gone, she was, indeed, alone.

There was not a single article of furniture left in the room, except this low, rough, pallet bedstead, with the dingy sacking, bare of bed and bed-clothes. Everything else was gone. There was now no candlestick left, no tea-pot or cup, no flat-iron or poker; not one of the small household goods of the very poor. Bess had carried all the few possessions left to her, in a miscellaneous lot, to get what she could for them, at the marine stores. She would have carried off the bedsteads if they had not been too heavy for her; or if her mother's corpse had not been lying there.

Euclid, her only friend, had not been near her these three days. The truth is that the poor old man was passing through a great and severe struggle, and it was not over yet. He had grown in a measure fond of Bess, and his heart was grieved to the very core for her. But what was he to do? he continually asked himself. What could a poor old man like him do? He was terribly afraid of taking any additional weight upon his overburdened shoulders, especially now he was in sight of his goal. For the last year or two, as he felt the infirmities of age growing heavier, an unspeakable dread lodged in his inmost soul, lest, after all, he should fail in his life's aim. Could he endure to see Victoria buried as Mrs. Fell was? He had lurked in a dark corner of the staircase, and watched the rough and reckless way in which the rude, slight box, that could hardly be called a coffin, was bundled out of the house, and carried off along the street, followed by Bess alone, as the only mourner for the dead. It had given a sharp and poignant prick to his hidden fears. How could he burden himself with the care of Bess while there was any chance of such an ending to his career, or worse still, to Victoria's? If Victoria had been buried in her own coffin, as his wife, and the other children had been, he might have taken up with Bess. But she seemed no nearer the grave than at the beginning of the winter: her health, or rather her complaint, whatever it was, remained stationary. No; he must not sacrifice Victoria to Bess.

Poor Bess! But as she was sitting alone in the gathering twilight, bewildered with her sorrow, she heard the door softly opened, and as softly closed again. It was Victoria who had come in, after crawling feebly down the long flights of stairs, which she had mounted four months ago, in the autumn, for the last time as she thought. She could not speak yet, and she sat down breathless and silent beside the desolate girl. There was a mournful stillness as of death in the room, though all around were echoing the busy, jarring noises of common life.

"I don't know much," said Victoria at last in her low, weak voice, "but I've dreams sometimes, lyin' up there alone all day, and I seem to see quite plain some place where the sun is always shinin', and folks are happy, and there mother is! I saw it last night, betwixt sleepin' and wakin', as plain as I see you, and your mother was there, Bess; and some one, I couldn't see His face, was leadin' her to where the sun was warm and bright, and choosin' a good place for her to rest in; and He looked as if He was watchin' for any little bit o' stone in the way for fear she'd hurt her feet, like we might do wi' a little, little child, just learnin' to go alone. And, oh! Bess, your mother turned so as I could see her face and it was very pale, but very peaceful. There wasn't any more pain in it."

"Is it true?" sobbed Bess.

"I don't know much," repeated Victoria. "I never went to school, for father couldn't pay for my schoolin'; and there wasn't any law to make him. He'd have done it gladly, but water-cresses isn't much for a family to live on. But I think it must be true, or how could I see it? I told father what I'm tellin' you; and I said to him 'Father, it don't matter very much about bein' buried in our own coffins, if we get to a place like that after all.'"

"And what did he say?" asked Bess.

"He made a noise like 'Umph!' and went off," answered Victoria.

"If there was only somebody to tell us true!" sobbed Bess again.

"Father won't let the missioners come to see me," went on Victoria; "he says they teaches cants to get coals, and he'd as soon get his coals from the parish. There was a sister o' mother's as was converted, and they put her into what they call a Report, and father was that ashamed! None on us had ever been in such a thing. We never had nothing to do with her, so as I don't know if it's true. Father says as he likes to see religion, and he don't see nothink he could call religion in her, or in most folks as are converted and put in the Report. I never knew rightly what converted means," said Victoria, sighing sadly, and speaking in a low voice, as if to herself.

But Bess was thinking no longer of Victoria's dreams. Her thoughts had gone in again, brooding over their own sorrows, and she moaned with a very deep and bitter moaning.

"Oh! what shall I do?" she cried, "what shall I do?"

"I came to fetch you up-stairs to live with us," answered Victoria, very softly; "father 'ill be glad enough when it's done. You'd be as good as another daughter to father if I was gone; and nobody knows how soon that may be. He's a bit shy and queer just now, but that'll be gone when it's all settled. You shall help me up-stairs again, Bess; and when father comes he'll get somebody to help him carry these bedsteads up for you and me to sleep on. It'll be better for me than sleepin' on the floor, you know."

When Euclid reached home an hour later, he paused before going up-stairs, and knocked at the door of Mrs. Fell's room; but there was no answer. He tried to open it, but it was locked. Where could little Bess be? he asked himself in sudden terror. She must be come back from the funeral by this time. Was it possible that she had taken shelter with Blackett? The old man's withered face tingled, and his frame shook as with ague, when the thought flashed across him. Whose fault would it be? It was he who had forsaken Bess in her misery; the fatherless, motherless, brotherless girl. He stood outside the closed and locked door, thinking of her light footstep and pretty face, tripping along at his side every morning for the last two months. He had not known how close she had crept to his heart until now the dread was beating against him that she was gone to Blackett! The old man's grey and grim face grew greyer and grimmer. It would be a hard thing, no doubt, to follow Victoria to the grave in a pauper's coffin; but, oh! it would be even harder to see Bess flaunting about the streets, a lost and wretched creature. His conscience smote him sharply. And now what must he do? What did he dare to do? It would be like braving a lion in his den to face Blackett at his own fireside. Yet probably Bess was there!

"God help this old tongue o' mine!" said Euclid, half aloud, as after some minutes of hesitation, he turned with desperate courage to knock at Blackett's door.

"Come in;" shouted Blackett, with a surly snarl.

Euclid opened the door, and stood humbly on the threshold. It was a room less bare, but more squalid with dirt than any other in the house. The woman who had been the mother of Blackett's three sons, had long ago disappeared; and what little cleanliness and comfort had once been known there had gone with her. The air was stifling with the fumes of tobacco and spirits, and Blackett was smoking over a fireplace choked up with ashes. Roger, who was bound hand and foot with strong cords, had rolled himself out of reach of his fathers's kicks, and was lying in a corner with an expression of terror and hatred on his face. But Bess was nowhere to be seen.

"Come in and shut the door!" shouted Blackett.

"Mr. Blackett," said Euclid, shutting the door behind him, with the long-sleeping courage of manhood stirring in his old heart, "have you seen aught of Mrs. Fell's little Bess?"

"Ay, have I!" growled Blackett with an oath. "Victoria's been and fetched her up to your rat-hole; and now I give you fair warning, old fellow, if you go to harbour that girl, I'll make this place too hot for you. I'll keep a eye on you going out and coming in, and you'll repent it sore. Get out o' this like a shot, or I'll begin on it at once."

But Euclid was off like a shot, before Blackett had finished his threats, and was mounting to his garret with a suddenly gladdened heart. "Thank God! thank God!" he repeated to himself, step after step up the long staircase. He had hardly heeded Blackett's menaces, though they lodged themselves unconsciously in his mind, and came back to his memory when his first gladness was over. Bess had fallen asleep for sorrow on Victoria's bed, and he stooped over her and laid his hard brown hand gently on her head, as if to welcome her to her new home. "God bless her!" he murmured.

Blackett's hatred and vengeance were no mean forces which Euclid could afford to forget or disregard. His enemy had him at an advantage, inasmuch as he could neither go in nor out of the house without passing the door of his room, where he might be lurking in ambush against him. Euclid was a peaceable, inoffensive old man, who had kept himself aloof from his neighbours in dread of falling into disturbances. It worried him to feel that he had made such a man his eneny, and at times he reflected on the possibility of moving; but Victoria's ill-health and weakness seemed to make that impossible, even if he could find an equally cheap attic in the neighbourhood.