Suddenly her eyes opened. The urchin found himself looking
straight into that expression, which, it would seem, had the power
to change his blood to salt. He howled piercingly and fell
backward.

The woman floundered for a moment, tossed her arms about her
head as if in combat, and again began to snore.

Jimmie crawled back in the shadows and waited. A noise in the
next room had followed his cry at the discovery that his mother was
awake. He grovelled in the gloom, the eyes from out his drawn face
riveted upon the intervening door.

He heard it creak, and then the sound of a small voice came to
him. "Jimmie! Jimmie! Are yehs dere?" it whispered. The urchin
started. The thin, white face of his sister looked at him from the
door-way of the other room. She crept to him across the floor.

The father had not moved, but lay in the same death-like
sleep. The mother writhed in uneasy slumber, her chest wheezing as
if she were in the agonies of strangulation. Out at the window a
florid moon was peering over dark roofs, and in the distance the
waters of a river glimmered pallidly.

The small frame of the ragged girl was quivering. Her
features were haggard from weeping, and her eyes gleamed from fear.
She grasped the urchin's arm in her little trembling hands and they
huddled in a corner. The eyes of both were drawn, by some force,
to stare at the woman's face, for they thought she need only to
awake and all fiends would come from below.