in her face.

"Er' ye well to-night, chile?" he said. "Yer look as yer did when yer
wor a little baby. Peart an' purty yer wor, dat's true. Der good Lord
loved yer, I think."

"He loves me now," she said, softly, to herself, as in her own room she
knelt down and thanked Him, and then, undressed, crept into the white
trundle-bed beside little Pen; and when he woke, and, putting his little
arms about her neck, drew her head close to his to kiss her good-night,
she cried quietly to herself, and fell asleep with the tears upon her
cheek.

Her sister, in the next room to hers, with the same new dream in her
heart, did not creep into any baby's arms for sympathy. Lizzy Gurney
never had a pet, dog or child. She sat by the window waiting, her shawl
about her head in the very folds McKinstry had wrapped it, motionless,
as was her wont. But for the convulsive movement of her lips now and
then, no gutta-percha doll could be more utterly still. As the night
wore down into the intenser sleep of the hours after midnight, her watch
grew more breathless. The moon sank far enough in the west to throw
the beams directly across her into the dark chamber behind. She was a
small-moulded woman, you could see now: her limbs, like those of a cat,
or animals of that tribe, from their power of trance-like quiet, gave
you the idea of an intense vitality: a gentle face,--pretty, the
villagers called it, from its waxy tint and faint coloring,--you wished
to do something for her, seeing it. Paul Blecker never did: the woman
never spoke to him; but he noted often the sudden relaxed droop of the
eyelids, when she sat alone, as if some nerve had grown weary: he had
seen that peculiarity in some women before, and knew all it meant. He