"Show me the way to it."

He stooped, and lifted Magdalen in his arms.
Her head rested gently on the sailor's breast;
her eyes looked up wonderingly into the
sailor's face. She smiled and whispered to him
vacantly. Her mind had wandered back to old
days at home; and her few broken words
showed that she fancied herself a child again in
her father's arms. " Poor papa!" she said,
softly. " Why do you look so sorry? Poor
papa!"

The woman led the way into the back room
on the first floor. It was very small; it was
miserably furnished. But the little bed was
clean, and the few things in the room were
neatly kept. Kirke laid her tenderly on the
bed. She caught one of his hands in her burning
fingers. " Don't distress mamma about
me," she said. " Send for Norah." Kirke
tried gently to release his hand; but she only
clasped it the more eagerly. He sat down
by the bedside to wait until it pleased her to
release him. The woman stood looking at them,
and crying in a corner of the room. Kirke
observed her attentively. " Speak," he said,
after an interval, in low quiet tones. " Speak, in
her presence; and tell me the truth."

With many words, with many tears, the
woman spoke.

She had let her first floor to the lady, a
fortnight since. The lady had paid a week's rent,
and had given the name of Gray. She had been
out from morning till night, for the first three
days, and had come home again, on every
occasion, with a wretchedly weary, disappointed
look. The woman of the house had suspected
that she was in hiding from her friends, under
a false name; and that she had been vainly
trying to raise money, or to get some
employment, on the three days when she was out
for so long, and when she looked so
disappointed on coming home. However that might
be, on the fourth day she had fallen ill, with
shivering fits and hot fits, turn and turn about.
On the fifth day, she was worse; and on the
sixth, she was too sleepy at one time, and too
light-headed at another, to be spoken to. The
chemist (who did the doctoring in those parts)
had come and looked at her, and had said he
thought it was a bad fever. He had left a
"saline draught," which the woman of the house
had paid for out of her own pocket, and had
administered without effect. She had ventured
on searching the only box which the lady had
brought with her; and had found nothing in it
but a few necessary articles of linen—no dresses,
no ornaments, not so much as the fragment of a
letter which might help in discovering her
friends. Between the risk of keeping her under
these circumstances, and the barbarity of turning
a sick woman into the street, the landlady
herself had not hesitated. She would willingly
have kept her tenant, on the chance of the
lady's recovery, and on the chance of friends
turning up. But not half an hour since, her
husband—who never came near the house,
except to take her money—had come to rob
her of her little earnings, as usual. She had
been obliged to tell him that no rent was in
hand for the first floor, and that none was
likely to be in hand until the lady recovered, or
her friends found her. On hearing this, he had
mercilessly insisted—well or ill—that the lady
should go. There was the hospital to take her
to; and, if the hospital shut its doors, there was
the workhouse to try next. If she was not out
of the place in an hour's time, he threatened to
come back, and take her out himself. His wife
knew, but too well, that he was brute enough to
be as good as his word; and no other choice
had been left her, but to do as she had done, for
the sake of the lady herself.

The woman told her shocking story, with
every appearance of being honestly ashamed of
it. Towards the end, Kirke felt the clasp of the
burning fingers slackening round his hand. He
looked back at the bed again. Her weary eyes
were closing; and, with her face still turned
towards the sailor, she was sinking into sleep.

"Is there any one in the front room?" said
Kirke, in a whisper. "Come in there; I have
something to say to you."

The woman followed him, through the door of
communication between the rooms.

"How much does she owe you?" he asked.

The landlady mentioned the sum. Kirke put
it down before her on the table.

"Where is your husband?" was his next
question.

"Waiting at the public-house, sir, till the
hour is up."

"You can take him the money, or not, as you
think right," said Kirke, quietly. "I have only
one thing to tell you, so far as your husband is
concerned. If you want to see every bone in
his skin broken, let him come to the house
while I am in it. Stop! I have something more
to say. Do you know of any doctor in the
neighbourhood, who can be depended on?"

"Not in our neighbourhood, sir. But I
know of one, within half an hour's walk of us."

"Take the cab at the door; and, if you find
him at home, bring him back in it. Say I am
waiting here for his opinion, on a very serious
case. He shall be well paid, and you shall be
well paid. Make haste!"

The woman left the room.

Kirke sat down alone, to wait for her return.
He hid his face in his hands; and tried to realise
the strange and touching situation in which the
accident of a moment had placed him.

Hidden in the squalid by-ways of London,
under a false name; cast, friendless and helpless,
on the mercy of strangers, by illness which had
struck her prostrate, mind and body alike—so
he met her again, the woman who had opened a
new world of beauty to his mind; the woman who
had called Love to life in him by a look! What
horrible misfortune had struck her so cruelly,
and struck her so low? What mysterious
destiny had guided him to the last refuge of her
poverty and despair, in the hour of her sorest
need? " If it is ordered that I am to see her
again, I shall see her." Those words came back