the whirlwind that they had shut it. Matches were struck, the candles
relighted, and the newcomers clearly perceived.

Smilash, bareheaded, without a coat, his corduroy vest and trousers
heavy with rain; a rough-looking, middle-aged man, poorly dressed like
a shepherd, wet as Smilash, with the expression, piteous, patient, and
desperate, of one hard driven by ill-fortune, and at the end of his
resources; two little children, a boy and a girl, almost naked, cowering
under an old sack that had served them as an umbrella; and, lying on
the settee where the two men had laid it, a heap of wretched wearing
apparel, sacking, and rotten matting, with Smilash's coat and
sou'wester, the whole covering a bundle which presently proved to be an
exhausted woman with a tiny infant at her breast. Smilash's expression,
as he looked at her, was ferocious.

"Sorry fur to trouble you, lady," said the man, after glancing anxiously
at Smilash, as if he had expected him to act as spokesman; "but my roof
and the side of my house has gone in the storm, and my missus has been
having another little one, and I am sorry to ill-convenience you, Miss;
but--but--"

"Inconvenience!" exclaimed Smilash. "It is the lady's privilege to
relieve you--her highest privilege!"

The little boy here began to cry from mere misery, and the woman roused
herself to say, "For shame, Tom! before the lady," and then collapsed,
too weak to care for what might happen next in the world. Smilash looked
impatiently at Miss Wilson, who hesitated, and said to him:

"What do you expect me to do?"