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The Old Homestead

by Ann S. Stephens · English · Gutenberg #8078 · 800,216 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Old Homestead

Author: Ann S. Stephens


        
Release date: May 1, 2005 [eBook #8078]
                Most recently updated: December 26, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8078

Credits: Produced by Wendy Crockett, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD HOMESTEAD ***




Produced by Wendy Crockett, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




THE OLD HOMESTEAD

A STORY OF NEW ENGLAND FARM LIFE.

BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.

AUTHOR OF "FASHION AND FAMINE," "THE REIGNING BELLE," "THE GOLD
BRICK," "MABEL'S MISTAKE," "THE WIFE'S SECRET," "BELLEHOOD AND
BONDAGE," "LORD HOPE'S CHOICE," "BERTHA'S ENGAGEMENT," "THE CURSE
OF GOLD," "NORSTON'S REST," "A NOBLE WOMAN," "THE SOLDIER'S ORPHANS,"
"THE HEIRESS," "MARRIED IN HASTE," "PALACES AND PRISONS," "DOUBLY
FALSE," "MARY DERWENT," "THE REJECTED WIFE," "RUBY GRAY'S STRATEGY,"
"THE OLD COUNTESS," "SILENT STRUGGLES," "WIVES AND WIDOWS," ETC.

"THE OLD HOMESTEAD" is a superb story of quaint New England farm life
in the vein now so popular both in fiction and on the stage. With
an absorbing plot, effective incidents and characters entirely true
to nature, it holds attention as very few stories do. It possesses
all that powerful attraction which clings to a romance of home, the
family fireside and the people who gather about it. Simplicity and
strength are happily combined in its pages, and no one can begin it
without desiring to read it through. All the works of Mrs. Ann S.
Stephens are books that everybody should read, for in point of real
merit, wonderful ingenuity and absorbing interest they loom far above
the majority of the books of the day. She has a thorough knowledge
of human nature, and so vividly drawn and natural are her characters
that they seem instinct with life. Her plots are models of
construction, and she excels in depicting young lovers, their trials,
troubles, sorrows and joys, while her love scenes fascinate the young
as well as the old. In short, Mrs. Stephens' novels richly merit both
their vast renown and immense popularity, and they should find a place
in every house and in every library.




CHAPTER I.

THE FATHER'S RETURN.


  She kneels beside the pauper bed,
    As seraphs bow while they adore!
  Advance with still and reverent tread,
    For angels have gone in before!

"I wonder, oh, I wonder if he will come?"

The voice which uttered these words was so anxious, so pathetic with
deep feeling, that you would have loved the poor child, whose heart
gave them forth, plain and miserable as she was. Yet a more helpless
creature, or a more desolate home could not well be imagined. She
was very small, even for her age. Her little sharp features had no
freshness in them; her lips were thin; her eyes not only heavy, but
full of dull anguish, which gave you an idea of settled pain, both
of soul and body, for no mere physical suffering ever gave that depth
of expression to the eyes of a child.

But all was of a piece, the garret, and the child that inhabited it.
The attic, which was more especially her home, was crowded under the
low roof of a tenant house, which sloped down so far in front, that
even the child could not stand upright under it, except where it was
perforated with a small attic window, which overlooked the chimneys
and gables of other tenement buildings, hived full of poverty, and
swarming with the dregs of city life.

This was the prospect on one side. On the other a door with one hinge
broken, led into a low open garret, where smoke-dried rafters slanted
grimly over head, like the ribs of some mammoth skeleton, and loose
boards, whose nails had rusted out, creaked and groaned under foot.
They made audible sounds even beneath the shadowy tread of the little
girl, as she glided toward the top of a stair-case unrailed and out
in the floor like the mouth of a well. Here she sat down, supporting
her head with one hand, in an attitude of touching despondency.

"I wonder oh, I wonder, if he will come!" she repeated, looking
mournfully downward.

It was a dreary view, those flights of broken stairs, slippery and
sodden with the water daily carried over them. They led by other
tenement rooms, which sent forth a confusion of mingled voices, but
opened with a glimpse of pure light upon the street below.

But for this gleam of light, breaking as it were, like a smile through
the repulsive vista, Mary Fuller might have given up in absolute
despair, for she was an imaginative child, and glimpses of light like
that came like an inspiration to her.

After all, what was it that kept the child chained for an hour to
one spot, gazing so earnestly down toward the opening? Did she expect
any one?

No, it could not be called expectation, but something more beautiful
still--FAITH.

Most persons would call it presentiment; but presentiment is not the
growth of prayer, or the conviction which follows that earnest
pleading when the soul is crying for help.

"Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for
of such is the kingdom of heaven."

Again and again Mary Fuller had read these words, and always to creep
upon her knees and ask God to let her come, for she was scarcely more
than a little child.

But even upon her knees the trouble of her soul grew strong. She felt
as if the air around whispered--

"But you are not a little child--they have no sins of disobedience
to confess--no vengeful thoughts or unkind words to atone for as you
have."

And all the evil that had yet taken growth in a soul planted among
evil arose before the child, to startle her from claiming the
privilege of her childhood.

But though she did not know it, those very feelings were an answer
to the unrevealed want that had become clamorous in her soul; it was
the promise of a bright revelation yet to come; her heart was being
unfolded to the sunshine, leaf by leaf, and God's angels might have
smiled benignly as they watched the development of good in that little
soul, amid the depressing atmosphere that surrounded it.

From the day that her poor father left home and went up to the
hospital a pauper to die there, these feelings had grown stronger
and stronger within the bosom of the child. His words, unheeded at
the time, came back to her with power. The passages read over so often
to a careless ear from his Bible, seemed to have taken music in their
remembrance, that haunted her all the time.

She did not know it, but the atmosphere of prayers, unheard save in
heaven, was around her. From its pauper bed at Bellevue a strong
earnest soul was pleading for that child, and thus God sent his angel
down to trouble the waters of life within her.

As we grow good, a sense of the beautiful always awakens within us;
and this became manifest in Mary Fuller. For the first time the
squalid misery of her home became a subject of self-reproach, and
with a thoughtful cloud upon her brow, she set herself patiently to
work drawing out all the scant elements of comfort that the place
afforded. Out of this grew a longing for the presence of her father,
that he too might enjoy the benefit of her exertion.

Never in her life had she so yearned for a sight of that pale face.
It seemed as if the trouble and darkness in her soul must turn to
light when he came. With this intense desire arose a thought that
he might return home without warning. The thought grew into hope,
and at last strengthened into faith.

Mary Fuller not only believed that her father would come, but she
felt sure he would be with her that very night. Thus she sat upon
the stairs waiting.

But time wore on, and anxiety made the child restless. She began to
doubt--to wonder how she could have expected her father without one
word or promise to warrant the hope. That which had been faith an
hour before, grew into a sharp anxiety. She folded her arms upon her
knees, and burying her face upon them, began to cry.

At last she arose with her eyes full of tears, and walked sadly into
the attic room where she sat down looking with sorrow on all the
little preparations that she had made. She crept to the window, and
clinging with both hands to the sill, lifted herself up to see, by
the shadows that lay among the chimneys, and the slanting gold of
the sunshine which, thank God, warms the tenement house and the palace
towers alike, how fast the hours wore on.

"Oh, the sun is up yet, and the long chimney's shadow is only half
way to the eves," she exclaimed, hopefully, dropping down from the
window, while a flush, as of joyful tears, stole around her eyes.

"Is there anything else I can do?" and she looked eagerly around the
room.

It had been neatly swept. A fire burned in the little coffee-pot stove
that occupied one corner, and the hum of boiling water stole out from
a tea-kettle that stood upon it.

"Everything nice and warm as toast--won't he like it--clean sheets
upon the bed, and--and--oh, I forgot--it always lay back of his
pillow--he mustn't miss it"; and opening a worn Bible that had seen
better days, she found a passage that cheered her heart like a
prophecy, and read it with solemn attention as she walked slowly
across the room.

She placed the Bible reverently beneath the single pillow arranged
so neatly on the bed, and turned away murmuring--

"At any rate, I will have everything ready."

She opened the drawer of a pine table and looked in. Everything was
in order there, and the table itself; she employed another minute
in giving its spotless surface an extra polish; then arranged a
fragment of carpet before the bed, and sat down to wait again.

It would not do; her poor little heart was getting restless with
impatience. She went into the open garret closing the door after her,
that no heat might escape, and sat down on the upper flight of stairs
again. How she longed to run down--to hang about the door-step, and
even go as far as the corner to meet him! But this would be
disobedience. How often had he told her never to loiter in the street
or about the door? So she sat, stooping downward, and looking through
the gleams of light that came through the open hall over flights of
steps below, thrilled from head to foot with loving expectation. Half
an hour--an hour--and there poor Mary Fuller sat, her heart sinking
lower and lower with each moment. At last she arose, went back to
her room with a dejected air, and sat down by the stove weary with
disappointment.

An old house cat that lay by the stove looked at her gravely, closed
her eyes an instant as if for reflection, and leaped into her lap.
Anything--the fall of a straw would have set Mary Fuller to crying
then, and she burst into a passion of tears, rocking herself back
and forth and moaning out--

"He will not come--it is almost dark now--he will not come. Oh, dear,
how can I wait--how can I wait!"

As she moaned thus, the cat leaped from her lap and walked into the
garret, stood a moment at the head of the stairs, and came back again
looking at his little mistress wistfully through the door.

Mary started up. Surely, that was his step! No! there was no firmness
in it. Whoever mounted those stairs, moved with a staggering, unsteady
walk, like that of a drunken person.

Mary turned very pale and hardly breathed.

"Oh, if it should be mother," she thought, casting a startled look
back into the little room, "staggering, too!" and trembling with
affright, she stole softly to the top of the stairs and looked down.

A gush of welcome broke from her lips. She held out her arms,
descending rapidly to meet him.

"Father! oh, my blessed, blessed father!"

They came up slowly, the deathly pale man leaning partly on his stick,
partly on the shoulder of the child, whose frame shivered with joy
beneath his pressure, and whose eyes, beaming with affection, were
uplifted to his.

"Not here, don't sit down here," she cried, resisting his impulse
to rest at the head of the stairs. "I have got a fire--the room is
warm--just five steps more--don't stop till then!"

He moved on, attempting to smile, though his lips were blue and his
emaciated limbs shivered painfully.

"There, sit down, father: I borrowed this rocking-chair of Mrs. Ford;
isn't it nice? Let me put the pillow behind your head. Are you very
sick, father?"

His lips quivered out, "Yes, very!"

She stooped down and kissed his forehead, then knelt by his side and
kissed his hands, also, with such reverential affection.

"Oh, father, father, how sorry I am; you will stay with us--you will
stay at home now--they have let you grow worse at the hospital; but
I--your own little girl--see if I don't make you well. You will not
go to Bellevue again, father."

"No, I shall never go back again; the doctors can do nothing for me,
but I could not die without seeing you again--that wish was stronger
than death."

"Oh, father, don't."

The sick man looked down upon her with his glittering eyes, and a
pathetic smile stole over his lips. An ague chill seized upon him,
and ran in a shiver through his limbs; but it had no power to quench
that smile of ineffable affection--that solemn, sweet smile, that
said more softly than words--

"Yes, my child, your father must die here in his poverty-stricken
home."

"No, no!" cried Mary, in fond affright; for the look affected her
more than his words; "it is only the cold, your clothes are so thin,
dear father--it is only the cold; a good warm cup of tea will drive
it off. Here is the kettle, boiling hot; besides, you are hungry--ah,
I thought of that; here are crackers and a dear little sponge-cake,
and such nice bread and butter; of course, it's only the cold and
the hunger. I always feel as if I should die the next minute, when
we've gone without anything to eat a day or two; nothing is so
discouraging as that."

She ran on thus, striving to cheat her own aching heart, while she
cheered the sick man. As if activity would drive away her fear, she
bustled about, put her tea to drawing by the stove, spread the little
table, and pulled it close to her father, and strove, by a thousand
sweet caressing ways, to entice him into an appetite. The sick man
only glanced at the food with a weary smile; but seizing upon the
warm cup of tea, drank it off eagerly, asking for more.

This was some consolation to the little nurse; and she stood by,
watching him wistfully through her tears, as he drained the second
cup. It checked the shivering fit somewhat, and he sat upwright a
moment, casting his bright eyes around the room.

"Isn't it nice and warm?" said Mary, as he leaned back.

The sick man murmured softly--

"Yes, child, it feels like home. God bless you. But your mother--did
she help to do this?"

Mary's countenance fell. She shrunk away from the glance of those
bright, questioning eyes.

"Mother has not been home in five or six days," she said, gently.

The sick man turned his head and closed his eyes. Directly, Mary saw
two great tears press through the quivering lashes, followed by a
faint gasping for breath.

"I have prayed--I have so hoped to see her before"--

He broke off; and Mary could see, by the glow upon his face, that
he was praying then.

She knelt down, reverently, and leaned her forehead upon the arm of
his chair.

After a little, Fuller opened his eyes, and lifting one pale hand
from his knee, laid it on his child's shoulder.

"Mary!"

She looked up and smiled. There was something so loving and holy in
his face, that the child could not help smiling, even through her
tears.

"Mary, listen to me while I can speak, for in a little while I shall
be gone."

"Not to the hospital again--oh, not there!"

"No, Mary, not there; but look up--be strong, my child, you know what
death is!"

"Oh, yes," whispered the child with a shudder.

"Hush, Mary, hush--don't shake so--I must die, very, very soon, I
feel," he added, looking at his fingers and dropping them gently back
to her shoulder; "I feel now that it is very nigh, this death which
makes you tremble so."

Mary broke forth into a low, wailing sob.

"Hush! stop crying, Mary; look up!"

Mary lifted her eyes, filled with touching awe, and choked back the
agony of her grief.

"Father, I listen."

Oh, the holy love with which those eyes looked down into hers!

"Have you read the Bible that I left behind for you?"

"Yes, father; oh, yes, morning and night."

"Then, you know that the good meet again, after death?"

"But I--I am not good. Oh, father, father, I cannot make myself good
enough to see you again; you will go, and I shall be left behind--I
and mother!--I and mother!"

"Have you been patient with your mother--respectful to her?" he asked,
sadly.

"There--there it is. I have tried and tried, but when she strikes
me, or brings those people here, or comes home with that horrible
bottle under her shawl, I cannot be respectful--I get angry and long
to hide away when she comes up stairs."

"Hush, my child, hush; these are wicked words!"

"I know it, father; it seems to me as if no one ever was so
wicked--try ever so much, I cannot be good. I thought when you came"--

"Well, my child."

"I thought that you would tell me how, and you talk of--. Don't,
father, don't; I want you so much."

"It is God who takes me," said Fuller, gently; "He will teach you
how to be good."

"Oh, but it takes so long; I have asked and asked so often."

Again that beautiful smile beamed over the dying man's face.

"He will hear you--He has heard you--I felt that you had need of me,
and came; see how God has answered your want in this, my child!"

"But I can do nothing alone; when you are with me, I feel strong;
but if you leave me, what can I do?"

"Pray without ceasing; and in everything give thanks," said that faint
gentle voice once more.

"But I have prayed till my heart seemed full of tears."

"They were sweet tears, Mary."

"No, no; my heart grew heavy with them; and--mother, how could I give
thanks when she came home so--!"

"Hush, hush, Mary--it is your mother!"

"But I can't give thanks for that, when I remember how she let you
suffer--how miserable everything was--how she left you to starve,
day by day, spending all the money you had laid up in drink!"

"Oh, my child, my child!" cried the dying man, sweeping the tears
from his eyes with one pale hand, and dropping it heavily on her
shoulder.

She cowered beneath the pressure.

"It is wrong--I know it," she said, clasping her hands and dropping
them heavily before her, as if weighed down by a sense of her utter
unworthiness. "But oh, father, what shall I do! what _shall_ I do!"

"Honor your mother!"

"How can I honor her, when she degrades and abuses us all!"

"God does not make you the judge of your parents, but commands you
unconditionally to honor them."

Mary dropped her eyes and stooped more humble downward. She saw now
why the darkness had hung so long over her prayers. Filled with
unforgiving bitterness against her mother she had asked God to forgive
her, scarcely deeming her fault one to be repented of. A brief
struggle against the memory of bitter ill-usage and fierce wrong
inflicted by her mother, and Mary drew a deep free breath. Her eyes
filled, and meekly folding her hands she held them toward her father.

"What shall I do, father?"

He drew her toward him, and a look of holy faith lay upon his face.

"Listen to me, Mary; God may yet help you to save this woman, your
mother and my wife; for next to God I always loved her."

"But what can I do? She hates me because I am so small and ugly. She
will never let me love her, and without that what can a poor little
thing like me do?"

"My child, there is no human being so weak or so humble that it is
incapable of doing good, of being happy, and of making others happy
also. The power of doing good does not rest so much in what we
possess, as in what we are. Gentle words, kind acts are more precious
than gold. These are the wealth of the poor; more precious than
worldly wealth, because it is never exhausted. The more you give,
the more you possess."

A strange beautiful light came into Mary's eyes, as she listened.

"Go on, father, say more."

She drew a deep breath.

"Then the good are never poor!"

"Never, my child."

"And never unhappy?"

"Never utterly miserable, as the wicked are--never without hope."

"Oh, father, tell me more; ask God to help me--He will listen to you."

He laid his pale hands upon her head, and as a flower folds itself
beneath the night shadow, Mary sunk to her knees. She clasped her
little hands, and dropping them upon her father's knee, buried her
face there; then the lips of that dying man parted, and the last
pulses of his life glowed out in a prayer so fervent, so powerful
in its faith, that the very angels of heaven must have veiled their
faces as they listened to that blending of eternal faith and human
sorrow.

Mary listened at first tremblingly, and with strange awe; then the
burning words began to thrill her, heart and limb, and yielding to
the might of a spirit which his prayer had drawn down from heaven.
She also broke forth with a cry of the same holy anguish; and the
voice of father and child rose and swelled together up to the throne
of God.

As he prayed, the face of the sick man grew sublime in its paleness,
and the death sweat rolled over it like rain, while that of the child
grew strangely luminous. Gradually mouth, eyes and forehead kindled
with glorious joy, and instead of that heart-rending petition that
broke from her at first, her voice mellowed into soft throes and
murmurs of praise.

The sick man hushed his soul and listened; his exhausted voice broke
into sighs, and thus, after a little time, they both sunk into
silence--the child filled with strange ecstasy--the father bowing
with calm joy beneath the hand of death.

"Let me lie down. I am very, very weak," he said, attempting to rise.

Mary stood up and helped him. She had grown marvellously strong within
the last hour, and her soul, better than that slight form, supported
the dying man.

He lay down. She placed the pillow under his head and knelt again.
It seemed as if her heart could give forth its silent gratitude to
God best in that position.

He laid his hand upon her head. It was growing cold.

"And you are willing now that I should die?"

"Yes, my father, only---," and here a human throb broke in her voice,
"if I could but go with you!"

"No, my child, it is but a little time, at most. For _her_ sake be
content to wait."

"Father, I am content."

"And happy?"

"Very, very happy, father!"

The dying man closed his eyes, and a faint murmur rose to his lips.

"Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes
have seen thy salvation."

His hand was still upon her head, and there it rested till the purple
shadows died off into cold grey tints, and upon his still face there
rose a smile pure as moonlight, luminous as waters that gush from
the throne of heaven.

The same holy spirit must have touched the living and the dead, for
when the little girl lifted her face, the pale, pinched features were
radiant as those of an angel. She had gone close to the gate of heaven
with her father, soul and body. She was bathed in the holy light that
had gushed through the portals.




CHAPTER II.

THE MAYOR AND THE POLICEMAN.


  When the strong man turns, with a haughty lip,
    On poverty, stern and grim,
  When he seizes the fiend with a ruthless grip,
    Ye need not fear for him.
  But when poverty comes to a little child,
    Freezing its bloom away--
  When its cheeks are thin and its eyes are wild,
    Give pity its gentle sway.

It was a bitter cold night--a myriad of stars hung in the sky, clear
and glittering, as if burnished by the frost. The moon sent down a
pale, freezing brilliancy that whitened all the ground, as if a
sprinkling of snow had fallen, but there was not a flake on the earth
or in the air. Little wind was abroad, but that little pierced through
mufflers and overcoats, like a swarm of invisible needles, sharp and
stinging. It was rather late in the evening, and in such weather few
persons were tempted abroad. Those who had comfortable hearths
remained at home, and even the street beggars crept within their
alleys and cellars; many of them driven to seek shelter in their
rags, without hope of fire or food.

But there was one man in New York city, who could neither seek rest
nor shelter till a given time, however inclement the weather might
be. With a thick pilot cloth overcoat buttoned to the chin, and his
glittering police star catching the moonbeams as they fell upon his
breast, he strode to and fro on his beat, occasionally pausing, with
his eyes lifted towards the stars, to ponder over some thought in
his mind, but speedily urged to motion again by the sharp tingling
of his feet and hands.

A feeling and thoughtful man was this policeman; he possessed much
originality of mind, which had received no small share of cultivation.
He had been connected with a mercantile house till symptoms of a
pulmonary disease drove him from his desk; then, by the kind aid of
a politician, who had not entirely lost all human feelings in the
council chamber, he was enrolled in the city police. To a mind less
nobly constructed, this minor position might have been a cause of
depression and annoyance, but John Chester, though not yet thirty-two,
had learned to think for himself. He felt that no occupation could
degrade an honorable man, and that gentlemanly habits, integrity and
intelligence were certain to shine out with greater lustre when found
in the humbler spheres of life.

Chester possessed both education and refinement, but having no better
means of support, accepted that which Providence presented, not with
grumbling condescension, but with that grateful alacrity which was
a sure proof that his duties would be faithfully performed; and that,
though capable of higher things, he was not one to neglect the most
humble, when they became duties.

To a man like Chester, the solitude of his night watches was at times
a luxury. When the great city lay slumbering around him, his mind
found subjects of deep thought in itself and in surrounding things.
Even on the night when we present him to the reader, the cold air,
while it chilled his body, seemed only to invigorate his mind. Instead
of brooding gloomily over his own position, certainly very inferior
to what it had been, he had many a compassionate thought for those
poorer than himself, without one envious feeling for the thousands
and thousands who would have deemed his small income of ten dollars
a week absolute poverty.

The ward in which he was stationed exhibited in a striking degree
the two great extremes of social life. Blocks of palatial buildings
loomed imposingly along the broad streets. Each dwelling, with its
spacious rooms and luxurious accommodations, was occupied by a single
family, sometimes of not more than two or three persons. Here plate
glass, silver mounted doors, and rich traceries in bronze and iron,
gave brilliant evidence of wealth; while many small gardens thrown
together, rich with shrubbery and vines in their season of verdure,
threw a fresh glow of nature around the rich man's dwelling. Resources
of enjoyment were around him on every hand. Each passing cloud seemed
to turn its silver lining upon these dwellings, as it rolled across
the heavens.

You had but to turn a corner, and lo! the very earth seemed vital
and teeming with human beings. Poor men and the children of poor men,
disputed possession of every brick upon the sidewalks. Every hole
in those dilapidated buildings swarmed with a family; every corner
of the leaky garrets and damp cellars was full of poverty-stricken
life. Here were no green trees, no leaf-clad vines climbing upon the
walls; empty casks, old brooms, and battered wash-tubs littered the
back yards, which the sweet fresh grass should have carpeted. Ash
pans and tubs of kitchen offal choked up the areas. The very light,
as it struggled through those dingy windows, seemed pinched and smoky.

All this contrast of poverty and wealth lay in the policeman's beat.
Now he was with the rich, almost warmed by the light that came like
a flood of wine through some tall window muffled in crimson damask.
The smooth pavements under his feet glowed with brilliant gas-light.
The next moment, and a few smoky street lamps failed to reveal the
broken flagging on which he trod. Now and then the gleam of a coarse
tallow candle swaling gloomily away by some sick bed, threw its murky
light across his path. Still, but for the cold moonlight, Chester
would have found much difficulty in making his rounds in the poor
man's district. Yet here he remained longest; here his step always
grew heavy and his brow thoughtful. Surrounded by suffering, shut
out from his eyes only by those irregular walls, and clouded, as it
were, with the slumbering sorrow around him, this dark place always
cast him into painful thought. That cold night he was more than
usually affected by the suffering which he knew was close to him,
and only invisible to the eye.

The night before, he had entered one of those dismal houses and had
taken from thence a woman who, squalid and degraded as she was, had
evidently once been in the higher walks of life. As he passed her
dwelling, the remembrance of this woman sent a thrill of mingled pity
and disgust through his heart. The miserable destitution of her home,
the glimpses of refinement that broke through her outbursts of
passion, the state of revolting intoxication in which she was
plunged--all arose vividly to his mind. He paused before the house
with a feeling of vague interest. The night before, a scene of perfect
riot greeted him as he approached the door. Now the inmates seemed
numbed, silent and torpid with cold.

As Chester stood gazing on the house, he saw that the door was open,
and fancied that some object was moving in the hall. It seemed at
first like a lame animal creeping down the steps. As it came forth
into the moonlight, Chester saw that it was a child with a singular,
crouching appearance, muffled in an old red cloak that had belonged
to some grown person. With a slow and painful effort the child dragged
itself along the pavement, its face bent down, and stooping, as if
it had some burden to conceal. The old cloak brushed Chester's
garments, yet the child seemed quite unconscious of his presence,
but moved on, breathing hard and shuddering with the cold, till he
could hear her teeth knock together. Chester did not speak, but softly
followed the child.

The Mayor of New York at that time lived within Chester's beat, and
toward his dwelling the little wanderer bent her way. As she drew
near the steps, the child lifted her face for the first time, and
reaching forth a little wan hand, held herself up by the railing.
She was not seeking that particular house, but there her strength
gave way, and she clung to the cold iron, faint and trembling, with
her eyes lifted wildly towards the drawing-room windows.

The plate glass was all in a blaze from a chandelier that hung within,
and the genial glow fell upon that little frost-bitten face, lighting
it up with intense lustre. The face was not beautiful--those features
were too pale--the eyes large and hollow, while black lashes of
unusual length gave them a wild depth of color that was absolutely
fearful. Still there was something in the expression of those wan
features indescribably touching--a look of meek suffering and of moral
strength unnatural in its development. It was the face of a child,
suffering, feeble, with the expression of a holy spirit breaking
through, holy but tortured.

The child clung to the railing, waving to and fro, but holding on
with a desperate grasp. She seemed struggling to lift herself to an
upright position, but without sufficient strength. Chester advanced
a step to help her, but drew back, for, without perceiving him, she
was creeping feebly up the steps, with her face shrouded in darkness
again. She reached the bell with difficulty, and drew the silver knob.

Scarcely had the child taken her hand from the cold metal, when the
shadow of a man crossed the drawing-room window, and his measured
step sounded along the oilcloth in the hall. The door was unfastened,
and the Mayor himself stood in the opening. The child lifted her eyes,
and saw standing before, or rather above her, a tall man with light
hair turning grey, and a cast of features remarkable only for an
absence of all generous expression. He fixed his cold eyes on the
little wanderer with a look that chilled her worse than the frost.
As he prepared to speak, she could see the corners of his mouth curve
haughtily downward, and when his voice fell upon her ear, though not
particularly loud, it was cold and repelling.

"Well, what are you doing here? What do you want?" said the great
man, keeping his eyes immovably on the shivering child, enraged at
himself for having opened the door for a miserable beggar like that.

He was in the habit of extending these little condescensions to the
voters of his ward; it had a touch of republicanism in it that looked
well; but from that wretched little thing what was to be gained? Still
the child might have a father, and that father might be a citizen,
one of the sovereign people, possessed of that inestimable
privilege--a vote. So the Mayor was cautious, as usual, about
exhibiting any positive traces of the ill-humor that possessed him.
He had not groped and grovelled his way to the Mayoralty, without
knowing how and when to exhibit the evil feelings of his heart. Those
that were not evil he very prudently left to themselves, knowing that
they could never obtain strength enough in his barren nature to become
in the slightest degree troublesome.

Had kindly feelings still lived in his bosom, they must have been
aroused by the sweet, humble voice that answered him.

"They have turned me out of doors. I am hungry, sir. I am very cold."

"Turned you out of doors! Where is your father? Can't he take care
of you?"

"I have no father--he is dead."

No father, no vote! The little beggar had not the most indirect claim
for sympathy or forbearance from the Mayor of New York. He could
afford to be angry with her; nay, better, to seem angry also, and
that was an uncommon luxury with him.

"Well, why didn't you go to the basement?"

"It was dark there--and through that window everything looked so
warm--I could not help it!"

"Could not help it, indeed! Go away! I never encourage street beggars.
It would be doing a wrong to the people who look up to me for an
example. Go away this minute--how dare you come up to this door? You
are a bad little girl, I dare say!"

"No sir--no--no, I am _not_ bad! Please not to say that. It hurts me
worse than the cold!" said the child, raising her sweet voice and
clasping her little wan hands, while over her features many a wounded
feeling trembled, though she gave no signs of weeping.

What a contrast there was between the heartless face of that man,
and the meek, truthful look of the child! How cold and harsh seemed
his voice after the troubled melody of hers!

"I tell you, there is no use in attempting to deceive me. Station
houses are built on purpose for little thieves that prowl about at
night!" and the cold-hearted man half closed the door, adding, "go
away--go away! Some policeman will take you to a station house, though
I dare be sworn you know how to find one without help."

The door was closed with these words, shutting the desolate child
into the cold night again. She neither complained nor wept; but
sinking on the stone, gathered her frail limbs in a heap and buried
her face in the old cloak.

Chester heard the whole conversation; he saw the expression of meek
despair which fell upon the child as the door closed against her,
and with a swelling heart mounted the steps.

"My little girl," he said very gently, touching the crouching form
with his hand, "my poor, little girl!"

The child looked up wildly, for the very benevolence of his voice
frightened her, she was so unused to anything of the kind; but the
instant her eyes fell upon his bosom, where the silver star glittered
in the moonlight, she uttered a faint shriek.

"Oh, do not--do not take me--I am not a thief--I am not wicked!" and
she shrunk back into a corner of the iron railing shuddering, and
with her wild eyes bent upon him like some little wounded animal
hunted down by fierce dogs.

"Don't be frightened--I will take care of you--I"--

"They took _her_--the policemen, I mean. Where is she? What have you
done with her?"

"But I wish to be kind," said Chester, greatly distressed; she
interrupted him, pointing to his star with her finger.

"Kind? see--see. I tell you I am not a thief!"

"I know, I am sure you are not," was the compassionate answer.

"Then why take me up if I am not a thief?"

"But you will perish with the cold!"

"No--no; it's not so very cold here since the gentleman went away!"
cried the child in a faint voice, muffling the old cloak close around
her, and trying to smile. "Only--only"--

Her voice grew fainter. She had just strength to draw up her knees,
clasp the little thin hands over them, and in attempting to rock
herself upon the cold stone to prove how comfortable she was, fell
forward dizzy and insensible.

"Great Heavens! this is terrible," cried Chester, gathering up the
child in his arms.

Agitated beyond all self-control, he gave the bell-knob a jerk that
made the Mayor start from his seat with a violence that threw one
of his well-trodden slippers half across the hearth-rug.

"Who is coming now?" muttered the great man, thrusting his foot into
the truant slipper with a peevish jerk, for he had taken supper at
the City Hall that evening, and after a temperance movement of that
kind, the luxurious depth of his easy-chair was always inviting.

"Will that bell never have done? These gas-lights--I verily believe
they entice beggars to the door; besides, that great Irish girl has
lighted double the number I ordered," and, with a keen regard to the
economy of his household, the Chief Magistrate of New York mounted
a chair and turned off four of the six burners that had been lighted
in the chandelier. Another sharp ring brought him to the carpet, and
to the street-door again. There he found Chester with the little
beggar girl in his arms, her eyes shut and her face pale as death,
save where a faint violet color lay about the mouth.

"Sir, this child, you have driven her from your door--she is dying!"
said Chester, passing with his burden into the hall and moving towards
the drawing-room, from which the light of an anthracite fire glowed
warm; and ruddily "she needs warmth. I believe in my soul she is
starving!"

"Well, sir, why do you bring her here--who are you? Is there no
station-house? I do not receive beggars in my drawing-room!" said
the Mayor, following the policeman.

Chester, heedless of his remonstrance, strode across the carpet and
laid the wretched child tenderly into the great crimson chair which
"his honor" had just so reluctantly abandoned. Wheeling the chair
close to the fire, he knelt on the rug and began to chafe those thin
purple hands between his own.

"I could not take her anywhere else--she was dying with cold--a minute
was life or death to her," said Chester, lifting his fine eyes to
the sullen countenance of the Mayor, and speaking in a tone of
apology.

The Mayor bent his eyes on that manly face, so warm and eloquent with
benevolent feeling; then, just turned his glance over the deathly
form of the child.

"You will oblige me by moving that bundle of rags from my chair!"
he said.

"But she is dying!" cried the policeman, trembling all over with
generous indignation; "she may be dead now!"

"Very well, this is no place for a coroner's inquest," was the terse
reply.

The policeman half started up, and in his indignation almost crushed
one of the little hands that he had been chafing.

"Sir, this is inhuman--it is shameful."

"Do you know where you are?--whom you are speaking to?" said the great
man, growing pale about the mouth, but subduing his passion with
wonderful firmness.

"Yes, I know well enough. This is your house, and you are the Mayor
of New York!"

"And you--may I have the honor of knowing who it is that favors my
poor dwelling, and with company like that!" said the Mayor, pointing
to the child, while his upper lip contracted and the corners of his
mouth drooped into a cold sneer.

"Yes, sir, you can know: I am a policeman of this ward, appointed
by your predecessor--a just and good man; my name is John Chester.
Taking pity on this forlorn little creature, I followed her from a
house whence she had crept out into the cold, hoping to be of some
use; she came up here, and rang at your door. I heard what passed
between you. As a citizen, I should have been ashamed, had I
unfortunately been among those who placed you in power; I must say
it--your conduct to this poor starved thing, shocked me beyond
utterance. I thank God that no vote of mine aided to lift you where
you are."

"And so you are a policeman of this ward. Very well," said the Mayor;
and the sneer upon his face died away while he began to pace the room,
the soft fall of his slippers upon the carpet giving a cat-like
stillness to his movements.

He felt that a man who could thus fearlessly speak out his just
indignation, was not the kind of person to persecute openly. Besides,
it was not in this man's nature to do anything openly. Like a mole,
he burrowed out his plans under ground, and when forced to brave the
daylight, always cunningly allowed some pliant tool to remove the
earth that was unavoidably cast up in his passage. His genius lay
in that low cunning and prudent management, with which small men of
little intellect and no heart sometimes deceive the world. He had
long outlived all feelings sufficiently strong to render him
impetuous, and was utterly devoid of that generous self-respect which
prompts a man to repel an attack fearlessly and at once. In short,
he was one of those who _lie still and wait_, like the crafty pointer
dogs that creep along the grass, hunting out game for others to shoot
down for them, and devouring the spoil with a keener relish than the
noble hound that makes the forest ring as he plunges upon his prey.

True to his character and his system, the Mayor paused in his walk,
and, bending over the child, said coldly, but still with some
appearance of feeling--

"She seems to be getting better--probably it will be nothing serious!"

Chester looked up, and a smile illuminated his face. Always willing
to look on the bright side of human nature, his generous heart smote
him for having perhaps judged too harshly. The little hand which he
was chafing began to warm with life; this relieved him of the terrible
excitement which the moment before had rendered his words, if just,
more than imprudent.

"Thank you, sir, she _is_ better," he said, with an expression of
frank gratitude beaming over every feature, "I think she will live
now, so we will only trouble you a few minutes longer."

"My family are in bed--and these street beggars are so little to be
relied upon," observed the Mayor, evidently wishing to offer some
excuse for his former harshness, without doing so directly; "but this
seems a case of real distress."

Chester was subdued by this speech. More and more he regretted the
excitement of his former language. He longed to make some reparation
to a man who, after all, might be only prudent, not unfeeling.

"If," said he, looking at the child, whose features began to quiver
in the glowing fire-light, "if I had a drop of wine now."

"Oh, we are temperance people here, you know," replied the Mayor,
coldly.

"Or anything warm," persisted Chester, as the child opened her eyes
with a famished look.

"You can get wine at the station-house. My girls are in bed."

"I am afraid she will have small hopes of help at the station-house.
The Common Council make no provision for medical aid where the sick
or starving are brought in at night. It is a great omission, sir."

"The Common Council cannot do everything," replied the Mayor, becoming
impatient, but still subduing himself.

"I know sir, but its first duty is to the poor."

"Oh, yes, no one denies that;" replied the Mayor, observing with
satisfaction that Chester was preparing to remove the little intruder.
"You will not have a very long walk," he added. "The station-house
is not more than eight or ten blocks off. She will be strong enough,
I fancy, to get so far."

"Don't, don't take me there! I am not a thief!" murmured the child,
and two great tears rolled over her cheek slowly, as if the fire-light
had with difficulty thawed them out from her heart.

They were answered--God bless the policeman--they were answered by
a whole gush of tears that sprang into his fine eyes, and sparkled
there like so many diamonds.

"No," he said, taking off his overcoat, and wrapping it around the
child, his hands and arms shaking with eager pity as he lifted her
from the chair. "She shall go home with me for one night at least.
I will say to my wife, 'Here is a little hungry thing whom God has
sent you from the street.' She will be welcome, sir. I am sure she
will be as welcome as if I were to carry home a casket of gold in
my bosom. Will you go home with me, little girl?"

The child turned her large eyes upon him; a smile of ineffable
sweetness floated over her face, and drawing a deep breath, she said:

"Oh, yes, I will go!"

"You will excuse the trouble," said Chester, turning with his burden
toward the Mayor as he went out, "the case seemed so urgent!"

"Oh, it is all excused," replied his honor, bowing stiffly as he
walked towards the door, "but I shall remember--never doubt that!"
he muttered with a smile, in which all the inward duplicity of his
nature shone out.

That instant a carriage drove up to the door, and after some bustle
a lady entered, followed by a young lad, who paused a moment on the
upper step and gave some orders to the coachman in a clear, cheerful
voice, that seemed out of place in that house.

"Why don't you come in?" cried the lady, folding her rose-colored
opera-cloak closely around her, "you fill the whole house with cold."

"In a moment--in a moment," cried the boy, breaking into a snatch
of opera music as if haunted by some melody; "but pray send Tim out
a glass of wine, or he will freeze on the box this Greenland night."

"Nonsense! come in!" cried the mother, entering the drawing-room and
approaching the fire. Here she threw back her opera-cloak, revealing
a rich brocade dress underneath, lighted up with jewels and covered
as with a mist of fine lace! "he'll do well enough--come to the fire!"
she continued, holding out her hands in their snowy gloves for warmth.

The lady had not noticed Chester, who stood back in the hall, that
she might pass. Applicants of all kinds were so common at her
dwelling, even at late hours, that she seldom paused, even to regard
a stranger. But the noble-looking lad was far more quick-sighted.
As he turned reluctantly to close the door, Chester advanced with
the little girl in his arms, and would have passed.

"What is this?--what is the matter?--is she sick?" inquired the boy,
earnestly.

"She is a poor, homeless child, half frozen and almost famished,"
answered Chester.

"Homeless on a night like this!--hungry and cold!" exclaimed the lad,
throwing off his Spanish cloak and tossing his cap to the hall table.
"Come back, till she gets thoroughly warm, and I'll soon ransack the
kitchen for eatables; a glass of Madeira now to begin with. Lady
Mother, come and look at this little girl--it's a sin and a shame
to see anything with a soul reduced to this."

"What is it, Fred?" cried the lady, sweeping across the drawing-room;
"oh, I see, a little beggar girl! Why don't you let the man pass?
He's taken her up for something, I dare say."

"No," said Chester with a faint hope of getting food; "it is want,
nothing worse--she is frozen and starved."

"What a pity, and the authorities make such provision for the poor,
too! I declare, Mr. Farnham, you ought to stop this sort of thing--it
is scandalous to have one's house haunted with such frightful
objects."

Young Farnham drew toward his mother, flushed and eager.

"If the girls are in bed, let me go down and search for something,
the poor child looks so forlorn."

As he pleaded with his mother the hall light lay full upon him, and
never did benevolence look more beautiful on a young face. It must
have been a cold-hearted person, indeed, who could have resisted those
fine, earnest eyes, and that manner so full of generous grace.

"Come, mother, music should open one's heart--may I go?"

"Nonsense, Fred, what would you be at? The man is in a hurry to go.
Why can't you be reasonable for once," replied the weak woman,
glancing at her husband, who was walking angrily up and down the
drawing-room; and sinking her voice she added:

"See, your father is out of sorts; do come in!"

"In a moment--in a moment," answered, the youth, moving up the hall
and searching eagerly in his pockets--"stop, my dear fellow, don't
be in such a confounded hurry--oh, here it is."

The lad drew forth a portmonnaie, and emptied the only bit of gold
it contained into his hand.

"Here, here," he said, blushing to the temples and forcing it upon
Chester; "I haven't a doubt that everything is eaten up in the house,
but this will go a little way. You are a fine fellow, I can see that;
don't let the poor thing suffer--if help is wanted, I'm always on
hand for a trifle like that; but good night, good night, the governor
is getting fractious, and my lady mother will take cold--good night."

Chester grasped the hand so frankly extended, and moved down the
steps, cheered by the noble sympathy so unexpected in that place.

"You will understand," said the Mayor, turning short upon poor Fred,
as he entered the room, "you will please to understand, sir, that
to station yourself on my door-steps and call for wine as if you were
in a tavern, is an insult to your father's principles. It is not to
be supposed that this house contains Madeira or any other alcoholic
drink. Remember, sir, that your father is the chief magistrate of
New York, and the head of a popular principle."

"But why may I not request wine for a poor child suffering for warmth
and food, when we have it every now and then on the dinner table?"
inquired the boy seriously.

"You are mistaken; you are too young for explanations of this kind,"
answered the father sternly; "we never have wine on the table, except
when certain men are here. When did you ever see even an empty glass
there, when our temperance friends visit us?"

The boy did not answer, but kept his fine honest eyes fixed on his
father, and their half astonished, half grieved expression disturbed
the politician, who really loved his son.

"You are not old enough to understand the duties of a public station
like mine, Frederick; a politician, to be successful, must be a little
of all things to all men."

"Then I, for one, will never be a politician," exclaimed the boy,
while childish tears were struggling with manly indignation.

"God forbid that you ever should," was the thought that rose in the
father's heart; for there was yet one green spot in his nature kept
fresh by love of his only son.

"And," continued the boy still more impetuously, "I will never drink
another glass of wine in my life. What is wrong for the poor is wrong
for the rich. What I may not give to a suffering child, I will not
drink myself."

"Now that is going a little too far, I should say, Fred," interposed
Mrs. Farnham, softly withdrawing her gloves, and allowing the
fire-light to flash over her diamond rings; "my opinion has long been
that whisky punches, brandy what-do-you-call-'ems, and things of that
sort, are decidedly immoral; but champaigne and Madeira, sherry
coblers--a vulgar name that--always puts one in mind of low
shoemakers--don't it Mr. Farnham? if it wasn't for the glass tubes
and cut-crystal goblets, that beverage ought to be legislated on.
Well, Fred, as I was saying, refreshments like these are gentlemanly,
and I rather approve of them, so don't let me hear more nonsense about
your drinking wine in a quiet way, you know, and with the right set.
Isn't this about the medium, Mr. Farnham?"

The Mayor, who usually allowed the wisdom of his lady to flow by him
like the wind, did not choose to answer this sapient appeal, but
observed curtly, that he had some writing to do, and should like,
as soon as convenient, to be left to himself. Upon this the lady
folded her white gloves spitefully and left the room, tossing her
head till the marabouts on each side of her coiffure trembled like
drifting snow-flakes, while she muttered something about husbands
and bears, which sounded very much as if she mingled the two
unpleasantly together in her ideas of natural history.

Frederick followed his mother with a serious and grieved demeanor,
taking leave of his father with a respectful "good night," which the
Mayor, dissatisfied with himself, and consequently angry, did not
deign to notice.

When left to himself, the Mayor impatiently rang a bell connected
with the kitchen. This brought a hard-faced Irish woman to the room,
who was ordered to wheel the easy-chair into the hall, and have it
thoroughly aired the first thing in the morning. After that he gave
her a brief reprimand for exceeding his directions regarding the
gas-lights, and dismissed her for the night.

After she disappeared, the Mayor continued to pace up and down the
room, meditating over the scene that had just transpired.

"I was right in smoothing the thing over," he muttered; "one never
cares for the report of a little beggar like that. Who would believe
her? But this Chester might tell the thing in a way that would prove
awkward; a man like him has no business in the police. He thinks for
himself and acts for himself, I'll be sworn; besides, he is a fine,
gentlemanly-looking fellow, and somehow the people get attached to
such men, and are influenced by them. It always pleases me to twist
the star from a breast like that. It shall be done!" he added,
suddenly. "His language to me, a magistrate, is reason enough for
breaking him; but then I must not bring the complaint. It can be
managed without that."

Thus gently musing over his hopes of vengeance on a man, who,
belonging to an adverse party, had dared to speak the truth rather
too eloquently in his presence, the Mayor spent perhaps half an hour
very much in his usual way; for he had always some small plot to ripen
just before retiring for the night, and his plan of vengeance on poor
Chester was only a little more piquant than others, because it was
more directly personal.




CHAPTER III.

THE POLICEMAN'S GUEST.


    "Home, sweet home,
  Be it ever so humble there is no place like home."

Home is emphatically the poor man's paradise. The rich, with their
many resources, too often live away from the hearth-stone, in heart,
if not in person; but to the virtuous poor, domestic ties are the
only legitimate and positive source of happiness short of that holier
Heaven which is the soul's home.

The wife of Chester sat up for him that winter's night. It was so
intensely cold that she could not find the heart to seek rest while
he was exposed to the weather. The room in which she sat was a small
chamber in the second story of a dwelling that contained two other
families. Around her were many little articles of comfort tastefully
arranged, and bearing a certain degree of elegance that always betrays
the residence of a refined woman, however poor she may be. A well
worn but neatly darned carpet covered the floor. The chairs, with
their white rush bottoms, were without stain or dust. A mahogany
breakfast-table, polished like a mirror, stood beneath a pretty
looking-glass, whose guilt frame shone through a net-work of golden
tissue-paper. Curtains of snow-white cotton, starched till they looked
clear and bright as linen, were looped back from the windows, with
knots of green riband. A pot or two of geraniums stood beneath the
curtains, and near one of the windows hung a Canary bird sleeping
upon its perch, with its feathers ruffled up like a ball of yellow
silk.

All these objects, nothing in themselves, but so combined that an
air of comfort and even elegance reigned over them, composed a most
beautiful domestic picture; especially when Mrs. Chester, obeying
the gentle sway of her Boston rocking-chair, passed to and fro before
the lamp by which she was sewing--cutting off the light from some
object, and then allowing it to flow back again--giving a sort of
animation to the stillness, peculiarly cheerful.

Now and then Jane Chester would lift her eyes to the clock, which,
with a tiny looking-glass, framed in the mahogany beneath its dial,
stood directly before her upon the mantle-piece. As the pointer
approached the half hour before midnight, she laid the child's dress
which she had been mending upon the little oblong candle-stand that
held her lamp, and put a shovelful of coal on the grate of her little
cooking-stove. Then she took a tea-kettle bright as silver from the
stove, and went into a closet room at hand, where you could hear the
clink of thin ice as it flowed from the water-pail into the
tea-kettle.

When Mrs. Chester entered the room again with the kettle in her hand,
a soft glow was on her cheek, and it would be difficult to imagine
a lovelier or more cheerful face than hers. You could see by the
rising color and the sweet expression of her mouth, that her heart
was beginning to beat in a sort of fond tumult, as the time of her
husband's return drew near. The fire was darting in a thousand bright
flashes, through the black mass that had just been cast upon it,
shooting out here and there a gleam of gold on the polished blackness
of the stove, and curling up in little prismatic eddies around the
tea-kettle as she placed it on the grate. The lamp, clean and bright
as crystal could be made, was urged to a more brilliant flame by the
point of her scissors, and then with another glance at the clock,
the pretty housekeeper sat down in her chair again, and with one
finely-shaped foot laced in its trim gaiter resting upon the stove
hearth, she began to rock to and fro just far enough to try the spring
of her ankle, without, however, once removing her boot from its
pressure on the hearth.

"In twenty minutes more," she said aloud, lifting her fine eyes to the
dial with a smile that told how impatiently she was coquetting with
the time. "In twenty minutes. There, one has gone--another--five!--so
now I may go to work in earnest."

She started up as if it delighted her to be in a hurry, and rolling
up the child's frock removed it with a little work basket to the
table. Then she spread a spotless cloth upon the stand, smoothing
it lightly about the edges with both hands, and opening a little
cupboard where you might have caught glimpses of a tea-set, all of
snow-white china, and six bright silver spoons in a tumbler, spread
out like a fan, with various other neat and useful things, part of
which she busily transferred to the stand.

By the time her little supper table was ready, the kettle began to
throw up a cloud of steam from its bright spout. A soft, mellow hum
arose with it, rushing out louder and louder, like an imprisoned bird
carousing in the vapor. The fire glowed up around it red, and
cheerfully throwing its light in a golden circle on the carpet, the
stand, and on the placid face of Jane Chester as she knelt before
the grate, holding a slice of bread before the coals, now a little
nearer, then further off, that every inch of the white surface might
be equally browned.

When everything was ready--the plate of toast neatly buttered--the
tea put to soak in the drollest little china tea-pot you ever set
eyes on, old fashioned, but bearing in every painted rose that
clustered around it the most convincing evidence that Mrs. Chester
must at least have had a grand mother--when all was ready, and while
Mrs. Chester stood by the little supper stand pondering in her mind
if anything had been omitted, she heard the turn of her husband's
latchkey in the door.

"Just in time," she said, with one of those smiles which one never
sees in perfect beauty away from home.

But as she leaned her head gently on one side to listen, the smile
left her face. There was something heavy and unnatural in her
husband's tread that troubled her. She was turning toward the door,
when Chester opened it and entered the room with his overcoat off,
and bearing in his arms a mysterious burden.

"Why, Chester, how is this?--the night so cold, and your forehead
all in a perspiration. What is this wrapped in your coat?"

As Mrs. Chester spoke, her husband sat down near the door, still
holding the child. She took off his hat and touched her lips to his
damp forehead, while he gently opened his overcoat and revealed the
little thin face upon his bosom.

"See here, Jane, it is a poor little girl I found in the street
freezing to death."

"Poor thing! poor little creature!" said Mrs. Chester, filled with
compassion, as she encountered the glance of the great wild eyes that
seemed to illuminate the whole of that miserable face, "here, let
her sit in the rocking-chair close up to the fire--dear me!"

This last exclamation broke from Mrs. Chester, as she drew the great
coat from around the child, and saw how miserably she was clad; but
checking her astonishment, she placed her guest in the rocking-chair,
took off the old cloak, and was soon kneeling on the carpet holding
a saucer of warm tea to the pale lips of the child.

"Give me a piece of the toast, John," she said, holding the saucer
in one hand, and reaching forth the other towards her husband, who
had seated himself at the supper table. "This is all she wants--a
good fire and something to eat. Please pour out your own tea, while
I take care of her. She hasn't had a good warm drink before, this
long time, I dare say--have you, little girl?"

"No," said the child, faintly, "I never tasted anything so good as
that before in my life."

Mrs. Chester laughed, and the tears came into her eyes.

"Poor thing! it is only because she is starved, that this tea and
toast seem so delicious," she said, looking at her husband; "a small
piece more. I must be careful, you know, John, and not give her too
much at once," and breaking off what she deemed a scant portion of
the toast, the kind woman gave it into the eager hands of the child.

The little girl swallowed the morsel of toast greedily, and held out
her hand again.

Mrs. Chester shook her head and smiled through the tears that filled
her eyes. A look of meek self-denial settled on the child's face.
She dropped her hand, drew a deep breath, and tried to be content;
but in spite of herself, those strange eyes wandered toward the food
with intense craving.

"No," said Chester, answering the appealing glance of his wife, "it
might do harm."

The little girl gently closed her eyes, and thus shut out the sight
of food.

"Are you sleepy?" said Mrs. Chester.

"No," replied the child, almost with a sob. "I only would rather not
look that way; it makes me long for another piece."

Tears gushed through her black eyelashes as she spoke, and rolled
down her cheek.

"Wait a little while. In an hour--shall I say an hour, John?" said
Mrs. Chester, deeply moved.

Chester nodded his head; he did not like to trust his voice just then.

"Well," said the generous woman; "in an hour you shall have something
more; a cake, perhaps, and a cup of warm milk."

The child opened her eyes, and through their humid lashes flashed
a gleam that made Mrs. Chester's heart thrill.

"Now," she said, rising cheerfully, "we must make up some sort of
a nest for the little creature. Let me see, the bolster and pillows
from our bed, with a thick blanket folded under them, and four chairs
for a bedstead; that will do very nicely. You remember, Chester, when
our Isabel was ill, she fancied that sort of bed before anything.
Would you like to sleep that way, my dear?"

"I don't know, ma'am; I ain't used to sleeping in a bed, lately,"
faltered the little girl, bewildered by all the gentle kindness that
she was receiving.

"Not used to sleeping in a bed!" cried Mrs. Chester, looking at her
husband; "just fancy our Isabel saying that, Chester."

And with fresh tears in her eyes the gentle housewife proceeded to
make up the temporary couch, which she had so ingeniously contrived
for her little beggar-guest. She entered her bed-room for the pillows.
The light in her hand shed its beams full upon a little girl, whose
long raven curls lay in masses over the pillow, and down upon her
night-dress, till they were lost among the bed-clothes. The child
might be ten years of age, and nothing more beautiful could well be
imagined than the sweet and oval cast of her countenance. Color soft
and rich as the downy side of a peach, bloomed upon her cheek, which
rested against the palm of one plump little hand. Her chin was
dimpled, and around her pretty mouth lay a soft smile that just parted
its redness, as the too ardent sunbeam cleaves open a cherry.

"Isabel, bless the darling," murmured Mrs. Chester, as she bent over
her child, passing one hand under her beautiful head very carefully,
that her fingers might not get entangled in those rich tresses and
thus arouse the little sleeper.

She gently removed the pillow, and permitting the head to fall softly
back, stole away. The child murmured in her sleep, and feeling the
change of position, turned indolently. One hand and a portion of her
tresses fell over the side of the bed, her curls sweeping downward
half-way to the floor. When Mrs. Chester returned she found her child
in this position, partly out of bed, and with the quilt thrown back.
With a kiss and a murmured thanksgiving for the rosy health so visible
in that sleeping form, the happy mother covered up those little white
shoulders.

The little miserable child seemingly about her own daughter's age,
sat in the rocking-chair, following her with those singular eyes and
with that wan smile upon her lips. The contrast was too striking--her
own child so luxuriant in health and beauty--that little homeless
being with cheeks so thin and eyes so full of intelligence. It seemed
to her that moment as if the fate of these two children would be
jostled together--as if they, so unlike, would travel the same path
and suffer with each other. Nothing could be more improbable than
this; but it was a passing thought, full of pain, which the mother
could not readily fling from her heart. For a moment it made her
breathe quick, and she sat down gazing upon the strange child as if
fascinated, holding the warm hand of Isabel with both of hers.

Chester wondered at the stillness and called to his wife. She came
forth looking rather sad, but soon arranged the pillows, the blankets
and snowy sheets, which she brought with her, into a most inviting
little nest in one corner of the room. The little stranger watched
her earnestly, with a wan smile playing about her mouth.

Mrs. Chester saw that the strange child, though thinly clad, was clean
in her attire, and that some rents in her old calico frock had been
neatly mended.

"What is your name?" she said, gently taking the child's hand and
drawing her into the bed-room, "we have not asked your name yet,
little girl."

"Mary Fuller, that is my name ma'am," replied the child, in her sweet,
low voice.

"And have you got a mother?"

"I don't know," faltered the child, and a spot of crimson sprang into
her pinched cheek.

"Don't know!"

"Please not to ask me about it," said the child, meekly. "I don't
like to talk about my mother."

"But your father," said Mrs. Chester, remarking the color that glowed
with such unnatural brightness on the child's face with a thrill of
pain, for it seemed to her as if a corpse had blushed.

"My father! Oh, he is dead."

The color instantly went out from her cheek, like a flash of fire
suddenly extinguished there, and the child clasped her hands in a
sort of thoughtful ecstasy, as if the mention of her father's name
had lifted her soul to a communion with the dead.

Mrs. Chester sat down by a bureau, and searched for one of Isabel's
night-gowns in the drawer, now and then casting wistful glances on
her singular guest.

"Come," she said, gently, after a few minutes had elapsed, "let me
take off your frock, then say your prayers and go to bed."

"I have said my prayers," replied the child, lifting her eyes with
a look that thrilled through and through Mrs. Chester. "When I think
of my father, then I always say the prayers that he taught me, over
in my heart."

"Then you loved your father?"

"Loved him!" replied the child, with a look of touching despondency.
"My dear dead father--did you ask me if I loved him? What else in
the wide, wide world had I to love?"

"Your mother," said Mrs. Chester.

That flush of crimson shot over the child's face again, and bowing
her head with a look of the keenest anguish, she faltered out,

"My mother!"

"Well, my poor child," said Mrs. Chester, compassionating the strange
feeling whose source she could only guess at, "I will not ask any
more questions to-night. Keep up a good heart. You are almost an
orphan, and God takes care of little orphans, you know."

"Oh, yes, God will take care of me," answered the child, turning her
large eyes downward upon her person, with a look that said more
plainly than words, "helpless and ugly as I am."

"It is the helpless--it is children whom our Saviour--you know about
our Saviour?"

"Oh, yes, I know."

"Well, it was such little helpless creatures as you are whom our
Saviour meant, when he said, 'Of such is the kingdom of Heaven.'"

"Yes, such as I am, ma'am."

The child again glanced at her person, and then with a look of tearful
humility at Mrs. Chester.

Mrs. Chester bent over the drawer she was searching, to conceal her
tears; there was something strangely pathetic in the child's looks
and words.

"I thought," said the child, lifting her face and pointing to little
Isabel, with a look of thrilling admiration, "I thought when I came
in here, that Heaven must be full of little children like her."

"And why like her?"

"Because she looks in her sleep like the picture which I have seen
of Heaven, where beautiful, curly-headed children just like her, lie
dreaming on the clouds."

"Then you think she is like those little angels?" said Mrs. Chester,
unable to suppress a feeling of maternal pride, and smiling through
her tears as she gazed on her daughter's beauty.

"I never saw an ugly little girl in those pictures in my whole life,
and I have looked for one a great many times," said the child, sadly.

"Yes, but these pictures are only according to the artist's
fancy--they are not the real Heaven."

"I know; but then those who make these pictures do not so much as
fancy a little girl like--like me, among the angels."

"But I can fancy them there," said Mrs. Chester, carried away by the
strange language of the child--"remember, little girl, that it is
our souls--the spirit that makes us love and think--which God takes
home to Heaven."

"I know," said the little girl, shaking her head with a mournful
smile, "but she would not like to leave all those curls and that red
upon her mouth behind her, would she?"

Mrs. Chester shook her head and tried to smile; the child puzzled
her with these singular questions.

"And I--I should not like either, to leave my body behind!"

"Indeed--why not, little girl?" said Mrs. Chester, amazed.

"Oh, we have suffered so much together, my soul and this poor body!"
replied the child, sadly.

"This is all very strange and very mournful," murmured Mrs. Chester,
deeply moved. But she checked herself, and drawing the child toward
her, began to untie her dress. A faint exclamation of surprise and
pity broke from her lips as she loosened the garment and observed
that it was the only one which the little creature had on.

"Oh, this _is_ destitution," she said, covering her eyes with one hand
as little Mary crouched down and put on the nightdress. "What if she,
my own child, were left thus,"--and dashing aside her tears, Mrs.
Chester went to the bed and covered the little Isabel with kisses.

The strange child stood by in her long night-gown. A smile of singular
pleasure lay about her mouth as she attempted with her little pale
hands to arrange the plaited ruffles around her neck and bosom.
Drawing close to Mrs. Chester, she took hold of her dress, and looked
earnestly in her face. Mrs. Chester turned away her head; her lips
were yet tremulous with the caresses which she had bestowed upon her
child; and it seemed as if those large eyes reproached her.

"You are cold," she said, looking down upon the child.

"No, ma'am."

"Well, what is it you want--the milk I promised you?"

"No, not that. I will give up the milk, if you will only--only"--

"Only what, child?"

"If you will only kiss my forehead just once as you kissed hers,"
answered the child. And after one yearning look, her head drooped
upon her bosom. She seemed completely overpowered by her own boldness.

Mrs. Chester stood gazing on her in silent surprise. There was
something in the request that startled and pained her. Here stood
a poor, miserable orphan, begging with a voice of unutterable
desolation for a few moments of that affection which she saw profusely
lavished upon a happier child. Her silence seemed to strike the little
girl with terror. She lifted her eyes with a look of humble
deprecation, and said:

"Nobody has kissed me since my father died!"

Mrs. Chester conquered the repugnance, that spite of herself arose
in her heart, at the thought of chilling the lips yet warm from the
rosy mouth of her child, by contact with anything less dear, and
bending down, she pressed a tremulous kiss upon the uplifted forehead
of the little stranger.

Mary drew an uneven breath; an expression of exquisite content spread
over her face, and giving her hand to Mrs. Chester, she allowed
herself to be lead toward the pretty couch, made up so temptingly
in a corner of the outer room.




CHAPTER IV.

THE MIDNIGHT CONSULTATION


  Oh, it is hard for rich men in their pride,
    To know how dear a thing it is to give;
  When, for sweet charity, the poor divide
    The little pittance upon which they live,
  And from their scanty comforts take a share,
  To save a wretched brother from despair.

Chester was sitting by the fire, and a serious expression settled
on his features--he was pondering over the events of the evening;
his mind reverting constantly in spite of himself to the conversation
which he had held with the Mayor. Like most excitable persons, he
found, on reviving his own words, much to regret in them. His impulse
had been kind, his intention good, but notwithstanding this, he was
compelled to admit that his entrance into the Mayor's house must have
seemed singular and his words imprudent. Both were certainly justified
by the occasion. Still, Chester felt that he had made an enemy of
one who had the power to injure him deeply, and this thought gave
a serious cast to his features.

Jane Chester had put her little charge to bed. She now drew a chair
close to her husband, and placed her hand upon his.

"You are tired, John," she said. "You seem worn out. Has anything
gone wrong that you look so grave?"

"I fear, Jane," said Chester, turning his eyes upon the benign face
of his wife, with a look of anxious affection; "I fear that I have
not acted in the wisest manner to-night--by a few rash words I may
have made an enemy."

"An enemy, and of whom?" inquired the wife, entering as she always
did, heart and soul, into any subject that disturbed her husband.

Seeing her look of anxiety, Chester told her of his interview with
the Mayor, and the rash words which he had used regarding the little
girl. As Jane Chester listened, the anxious expression on her face
gave way to a glow of generous indignation.

"Why, what else could you have done with the poor little thing in
that dreadful state, and the station-house so far off? Surely, the
Mayor deserved all that you said and more--he must be conscious of
this, and glad enough to forget it."

"I don't know," said Chester, thoughtfully; "I should think him
capable of anything, but a frank and honest feeling of forgiveness."

"Well," said Jane Chester, hopefully, "we must not anticipate evil
in this way. Let the Mayor be ever so angry, he really has no power
to harm us. You can only be broken for bad conduct, and there we can
defy him, you know."

Chester smiled, but more at the trust and exulting love that beamed
in his wife's face, than from any confidence excited by her words.
He had relieved his mind by this little confidential chat, and made
an effort to be cheerful again.

Mrs. Chester turned and glanced toward the bed where her little guest
lay quite still, and to all appearance asleep. She looked so
comfortable in her snow-white gown and the little cap of spotted
muslin, with its border of cheap lace falling softly around the high
forehead and hollow temples, that Mrs. Chester could not help smiling.

"How contented she looks," murmured the happy wife, pressing her
husband's hand, and thus drawing his attention toward the little bed.
"Did you ever see such a change in your life?"

"She does sleep very quietly and looks almost pretty, now that she
is comfortable and quiet. You are pleased that I brought her home,
Jane?"

"Pleased, why yes, of course I am pleased, but then this is only for
one night, John. What will become of her to-morrow?" and Mrs. Chester
looked with a sort of pleading earnestness into her husband's face,
as if she had something on her mind which he might not quite sanction.

"I know--it was that partly which made me a little downhearted just
now. It will be hard for her to go away to-morrow--she will feel it
very much after you have made her so snug and comfortable."

"But why send her away?" said Mrs. Chester softly, as if she were
proposing something very wrong, only that her eyes were brim full
of kindness, and a world of gentle persuasion lay in the smile with
which she met his surprised look--it was a smile of audacious
benevolence, if we may use the term.

"If we could afford it," said Chester, heaving a sigh; "but no--no,
Jane, we must not think of this, remember I am in debt still. Let
us be just before we are charitable. We have no right to give while
we owe a cent which is not yet earned."

The smile left Jane Chester's face--she sighed and looked gravely
in the fire; this view of the matter dampened her spirits. After a
little her face brightened up.

"Well, John, I suppose you are right, but then what if I manage to
keep the child, and save just as much as usual at the end of the week?
then it would be my own little charity, you know."

"But how can you manage that, Jane?"

"Well, now, promise to let me have my own way--just promise that
before we go another step--and I will manage it; you shall see."

Chester shook his head, and was about to speak, but his wife rose
just then half leaning on his chair, her arm somehow got around his
neck, and bending her red lips close to his cheek she raised the only
hand that was disengaged and folded the fingers over his mouth.

"Not a word, John--not a word; only promise to let me have my own
way--I will have it--you know that well enough!"

"Well," said Chester, laughing, and trying to speak through the
fingers that held his lips, "well, go on--I promise--only don't quite
stop my breath!"

"Very well," said Jane Chester, removing her hand, and clasping it
with the other that fell over his shoulder; "now you shall hear."

"With our little family, you know, I have a great deal of spare time."

"I don't know any such thing, Jane--you are always at work."

"Oh, yes, stitching your shirt-bosoms in plaits so fine that nobody
can see them; ruffling Isabel's pantalets, and knitting lace to trim
morning-gowns and frocks--but what does that amount to?"

"Why, nothing, only you and Isabel always look so pretty and lady-like
with these things."

"Very well--but does all this stitching and so on, help to pay your
debts?"

"No, perhaps not; but then it pleases me--it sends us into the world
well dressed, and"--

"Gratifies your pride a little, hey!" said Mrs. Chester, interrupting
him. "Very well, this shall not be all my own charity. You and Isabel
shall help--we will all adopt the little girl."

"Well, what do you mean--what would you be at?"

"Why, just this--all the extra work that occupies me so much, we must
do without; you shall be content with clean white linen, and Isabel's
frocks and things must go with less trimming--she is pretty enough
without them, you know--then I can take in sewing, and earn enough
to pay for what the poor little thing will eat. Perhaps she knows
how to sew a little; at any rate, she and Isabel will be handy about
the house, and give me more time. There, now, isn't my plan a good
one? after all, I shall only do about the same work as ever. You and
Isabel will make all the sacrifices."

"I'm afraid not," replied Chester, drawing his wife towards him and
kissing her forehead; "but we shall make some, for I have often
thought how dreadful it would be to have you--so pretty, so well
educated--obliged to go round from shop to shop inquiring for work;
and have felt with some pride, perhaps, that while I lived you should
never come to this."

"But," said Mrs. Chester, with animation, "if we had no other way--if
Isabel were crying for bread, then you would not object--you would
give up this feeling of pride--for after all, it is only that."

"No, it is something more than pride, Jane," said Chester, tenderly.
"I love to feel that your comforts are all earned by my own strength;
that I am soul and body your protector; were I able, you should never
soil these hands with labor again!"

Mrs. Chester lifted the hand which she held to her lips, and her eyes
beamed with joy through the tears that filled them.

"I know all this, John, and it makes me love you! oh, how dearly;
but then it is wrong--very, very delightful, but still wrong."

"Why wrong, Jane, I cannot understand that?"

"Wrong--why because it might, if I were only selfish enough to take
advantage of your tenderness, make me a very useless, gossiping, idle
sort of person."

"You would never come to that, Jane."

"No, I should not like to become one of those worthless drones in
the great hive of human life, who exist daintily on their husbands'
energies, making him the slave of capricious wants that would never
arise but for the idea that it is refined and feminine to be useless.
I would be a wife; a companion; a help to my husband."

"And so you are, all these and more," said Chester, gazing with
delight on her animated face. "God bless you, Jane, for you have been
to me a noble and a true wife."

"Well, then, of course I am to have my own way now. This poor child,
I shall not mind in the least asking about work, when it is for her."

"But the shopkeepers, they will not know why you do this."

"Well, what need I care for them?"

"They will think you have a very shiftless, or perhaps dissipated
husband, who obliges you to go about among them begging for work."

"No--no, these miseries are not written in my face, John, they will
never think that of me."

"Or a widow, perhaps!" rejoined Chester, with a faint smile.

"Don't talk in that way," and Mrs. Chester's eyes filled with tears.
"A widow--your widow--I should never live to be that. The very thought
makes my heart stand still. With you I can do anything--but alone--a
widow--John, never mention that word again!"

Chester drew down his wife's head and kissed her cheek very tenderly,
smoothing her bright tresses with his hand the while.

"Why you should learn to think of these things without so much terror,
Jane," he said, in a voice full of tenderness, but still sad, as if
some unconquerable presentiment were overshadowing him.

"No--no--I cannot! Talk of something else, John; the little girl,
we have forgotten her."

The husband and wife both looked toward the couch. Mary had half
risen, and with her elbow resting on the pillow, was regarding them
intently with her large and glittering eyes.

"We have disturbed her!" said Jane Chester. "How wide wake she is,"
and she went up to the couch.

"I could not help listening," said the child, falling back on the
pillow as Jane came up. "Besides I want to say something. I can sew
very nicely, and wash dishes, and sweep, and a great many other
things--if you will only let me stay!"

"You shall stay--now go to sleep--you shall stay. Is it not so, John?"
said Mrs. Chester turning to her husband.

"Yes," said Chester, "the child shall stay with us; let her go to
sleep."

They all slept sweetly that night; Chester, his wife, little Isabel,
and the orphan, and such dreams as they had--such soft, bright dreams.
Could you have seen them slumbering beneath the humble roof, smiling
tranquilly on their pillows, you might have fancied that those little
rooms were swarming with invisible angels--spirits from paradise that
had come down to make a little heaven of the poor man's home. Indeed,
I am not quite sure that the idea would have been all fancy--for
Charity, that brightest spirit of heaven, was there, and what a
glorious troop she always brings in her train. Talk of flinging your
bread upon the waters, waiting for it to be cast up after many
days--why the very joy of casting the bread you have earned with your
own strength upon the bright waves of humanity, is reward enough for
the true heart.




CHAPTER V.

THE MAYOR AND THE ALDERMAN.


  A smooth and subtle man was he--
  Of crafty heart and Christian mien;
  His wisdom--cheating sophistry,
  Flung o'er his sins a mocking sheen.

Chester had business with the Chief of Police, and about nine o'clock
the next morning, after his adventure with the orphan, he passed into
the Park, through the south entrance, on his way to the Chief's
office. At the same moment, his Honor the Mayor came through a gate
near the corner of Chambers street, and walked with calm and stately
deliberation toward the City Hall. Nothing could have been more
precise or perfect than the outward man, which his honor exhibited
to the gaze of his constituents. Neatly-fitting boots, square toed,
and of the most elaborate manufacture, encased his feet. Not a speck
defiled their high polish; the very dust and mud which introduces
itself cosily into the habiliments of your common, warm hearted men,
seemed to shrink away chilled and repulsed by the immaculate coldness
that clung like an atmosphere around the Mayor of New York. The nap
of his hat lay shining and smooth as satin; so deeply and thoroughly
was it brushed down into the stock, that it seemed as if a whirlwind
would have failed to ripple the fur. His black coat, his satin vest
and plaited linen presented a glossy and spotless surface to the
winter sun. His black gloves--in New York we have a great many public
funerals, and the city supplies mourning gloves to the Common
Council--his black gloves were neatly buttoned, and above them lay
his snow-white wristbands, folded carefully over the cuffs of his
coat, and his right hand grasped a prudish-looking cane which seemed
part and parcel of the man.

A sublime picture of official dignity was the Mayor as he crossed
the Park that morning. An expression of bland courtesy lay upon his
features; all the proprieties of life were elaborated in his slightest
movement. Nothing, save heart and principle, was lacking that could
ensure popularity; but this deficiency, if it does not render a man
absolutely unpopular, chills all enthusiasm regarding him.

A man must possess fire in himself before he can kindle up the
electricity that thrills the great popular heart. With all his
propriety--with all his silky and subtle efforts, our Mayor was
generally regarded with indifference. He was neither loved nor hated
sufficiently for the populace to know or care much about him. Oily
Gammon himself could not have presented a more perfect surface to
the people. Still this man could hate like an Indian and sting like
a viper. You would not have doubted that, had you seen him when he
first encountered Chester in the Park. There was a glitter in his
eye which you could not have, mistaken. During the moment when he
saw Chester turning an angle of the City Hall, this flash came and
went, leaving his face unmoved as before, only that he almost smiled
as the policeman drew near.

"And how is your little charge this morning?" inquired his honor,
pausing in the walk where it curves to the back entrance of the City
Hall. "Better, I hope?"

"Oh, yes, sir, much better," answered Chester with generous warmth.
"I thank your honor for inquiring."

"I suppose you are going to the Alms House Commissioner," rejoined
the Mayor, glancing toward the old building which ran along Chambers
street, where many of the public offices were held; "she will be well
cared for at Bellevue."

Chester blushed as if he were confessing some fraud, and answered
with embarrassment that the little girl would remain with him, at
least for the present.

The Mayor looked perfectly satisfied with the answer, bowed and walked
forward. On his way up the steps and along the lobby, he occasionally
saluted some lawyer that plunged by him with a load of calf-bound
volumes pressed ostentatiously under his arm, and paused once or twice
to exchange words with a street inspector or petty official, who
formed the small wires of his political machinery.

The Mayor spent half an hour in his private office, closeted with
his chief clerk, who had been busy over night preparing a speech which
his honor was to deliver before some distinguished city guest the
next day. In these matters the chief magistrate proved rather hard
to please, as he was fond of high-sounding words and poetical ideas,
but found them very difficult to commit to memory.

In this case the clerk had done wonders, and taking a copy for study,
his honor disposed himself in the great easy-chair of his private
room, with the manuscript before him, as if profoundly occupied with
some intricate law opinion, and commenced the arduous task of
committing the ideas of a better cultivated mind to his own sterile
brain. While he was thus occupied, a man entered with a good-humored,
blustering air, and threw himself into a seat by the fire, carelessly
shaking the Mayor's hand as he passed, as if quite certain of a good
reception at all times.

"Busy making out a new veto case, I dare say?" observed the visitor,
glancing at the sheet of manuscript which his honor held.

The Mayor folded up his unlearned speech, and turning quietly in his
seat, dropped into a desultory conversation with this man about city
matters, talking in a circle, and gradually drawing toward the subject
which he had at heart, till it seemed to drop in quite by accident.

"Speaking of policemen," said the Mayor, "there is a man in our ward,
Alderman, whom I have heard of very often, lately, a tall, gentlemanly
sort of a fellow--Chester, I think that is his name. Do you happen
to know anything about him?"

"Chester--Chester--yes, I should think so. A fellow that reads like
a minister and writes like a clerk; he is a perfect nuisance in the
ward. You have no idea what mischief he does with his gentlemanly
airs."

"What! a strong politician is he?"

"I hardly know; but he is not one of us, that is certain."

"It is due to the party--the fellow ought to be removed," said the
Mayor. "I wonder some one has never preferred charges against him."

"Plenty of our people have been lying in wait for him, but he is not
to be trapped; he understands all the rules, and lives up to them.
Never drinks--is always respectful--appears on his beat punctual as
a clock. In short, it is a hopeless case."

"Then it must be a very singular one," said the Mayor, with a meaning
smile. "Is there no good friend of your own who would be glad of the
situation?"

"Oh, yes--one to whom I have made a half promise, but we can get no
hold on this Chester, he will baffle us, depend on it."

"Perhaps not. Let your friend, who is waiting for the situation,
continue vigilant. If he is keen-sighted, his evidence will have
weight with me."

Our Alderman looked hard at the Mayor, somewhat doubtful if he
understood the whole meaning conveyed, more in the glance than in
the words of that honorable gentleman, who saw his perplexity and
spoke again.

"You know, my dear friend, how far I would strain a point to serve
you, but there must be some evidence--something, however slight, you
understand--which can be readily obtained against any man."

The Mayor saw by the smile that disturbed the lip of his friend, that
he was at length thoroughly understood.

"You know that there is no appeal from my decision," he added, with
a smile, "and I decide alone!"

"I comprehend," replied the Alderman, standing up and rubbing his
palms pleasantly together. "This is very kind of you, very kind,
indeed. I shall not forget it."

"I think your friend may be sure of his situation," was the amiable
reply; "you know it is our duty to watch these people well. I think
your friend may deem himself secure."

"No doubt of it, now that we have a friend at court."

"Oh, not a word of that," said the Mayor, lifting his hand
reprovingly, "everything must be in order, according to rule, you
know."

The Mayor smiled, while his friend laughed outright, repeating to
himself between each chuckle--"Oh, yes, according to rule, according
to rule;" and eager to undertake his new enterprise, the elated
Alderman took his leave, walking through the outer room with an
exaggeration of his previous blustering importance, that quite
astonished the clerks.

The Mayor looked after him with a bland smile, but when the worthy
official was out of sight, the smile glided into a contemptuous sneer,
and he muttered to himself--"The pompous blockhead, he is so easily
cajoled that one scarcely feels a pleasure in using him."

With these characteristic words the noble-hearted magistrate betook
himself to the manuscript again, certain that the wire he had pulled,
would never cease to vibrate till poor Chester was ruined.




CHAPTER VI.

THE DRAM SHOP PLOT


  The stars hang burning in the skies,
    The earth gives back their diamond light,
  Where like a radiant bride it lies
    Reposing in that glorious night.

Again the night was intensely cold. There had been a storm of sleet
and rain during two whole days, and now came on a keen frost, sheeting
the pavements, the trees and the housetops with ice.

Chester was pacing his rounds, as on the first night when we presented
him to the reader. Sometimes he paused to remark the delicate tracery
of ice that hung in fretted masses over the gutters, or was frozen
in waves along the curb-stones, or looked upwards to the tall trees
that seemed absolutely dripping with light, as the moonbeams streamed
over them, while the gas from the street lanterns sent up golden
gleams through the lower branches and along the glittering trunks.

Intensely cold as the night was, Chester could not resist that
exquisite sense of the beautiful, which objects so novel and
picturesque were sure to excite in his imaginative mind. There was
something so purely ideal in those massive branches, stripped of
leaves and laden down with crystalline spray, while the wind swayed
them heavily about, and the moonlight flooded them through and
through, that even a duller man than Chester must have paused to
admire.

Through the glittering arcade--for along the rich man's district the
trees grew thick and high--Chester could see the bright winter stars
shining, and the deep blue Heavens slumbering afar off, while with
folded arms and eyes uplifted he paced along the street, forgetful,
for the time, that the night was so cold, or that his own frame was
yet too feeble for unnecessary exposure.

In going to the poor man's district, Chester was obliged to pass one
of those majestic old elms which our forefathers planted, still to
be found here and there scattered over the great city. This elm stood
on a corner, and beneath its great pendent branches a small dram-shop
desecrated the soil which gave nourishment to the brave old forest
tree. This was the squalid object that fell upon Chester's gaze as
he glanced reluctantly from those long pendent branches, flashing
and shivering as it were with a fruitage of diamonds, to the dull
and dirty windows.

The dram-shop seemed to be full, for he could see the shadows of
several men passing to and fro behind the murky windows, and when
the door opened to let out a woman, who passed him with a small
pitcher in her hand, he saw that many others were left within the
building. There was something startling in the contrast between the
sublime beauty of the sky and the vice hovel underneath, and Chester
stopped to gaze on it, pondering in his thoughts how it was that men,
upright and honorable in other things, should ever become so lost
to all sense of humanity, as to legalize the vicious traffic which
this old elm, rising so nobly and so free against the sky, was obliged
to shelter.

As these thoughts occupied his mind, two men came out of the store,
arm in arm, and passed the place where he was standing. One of the
men looked keenly at him as he went by, but Chester scarcely observed
him, and remained as before, with his mind wholly engrossed.

"It is he!" said one of the men to his companion, "and looking toward
the corner, as if it would not be a hard job to get him in."

"Hush! he will hear you," replied the other. "Let us walk round the
block and go in from the other street; he will not know us again!"

"If we could but get him in for once, just long enough to taste one
glass, that would settle his business," was the rejoinder. "Move
slower, and let us talk it over. Jones will go in with us through
thick and thin, for the fellow has hurt his business more than a
little, reformed a great many of his best customers, and persuaded
others to be off. We shall find Jones ready for anything."

The two men walked forward, feeling their way along the slippery
sidewalk, and conversing earnestly until they reached the dram-shop
again.

Chester was still there, pondering the ideas of blended pleasure and
pain, which the scene had presented to him with unusual force that
evening. The dram-shop had opened two or three times while he was
standing there, and when the two men passed in he saw without closely
observing them.

At length, he was about to move forward, when the shop, that had been
up to that time remarkably quiet, became a scene of some strange
tumult. Three or four persons left abruptly, and the sound of loud,
angry voices reached him through the door whenever it was flung open
to allow persons to pass out. After a few minutes there came running
across the street a little boy, who seemed quite breathless with haste
and terror.

"Oh! you are a policeman, sir; I am so glad, pray come with me!" he
cried, seizing hold of Chester's coat. "They are quarreling--two men
are quarreling in there, and one of them has a knife drawn."

Chester hastened across the street, for the angry voices were becoming
louder, and there really seemed to be some danger threatened. He
entered the store, and to his surprise, found only two persons
present, besides the owner, who stood back of a little imitation
marble counter with his arms folded, evidently enjoying a scene of
altercation that was carried on, it appeared, with some effort between
his guests; for as one of the men was thrown back against the counter
in the scuffle, he merely circled two or three half empty decanters
with his arm, and laughingly told them not to interfere with their
best friends; then throwing half his weight upon the counter again,
he seemed to enter heart and soul into the dispute.

"There, there," said the owner, rising as Chester came in, "we have
had enough of this--here is the police. Give up, give up, both of
you. Shake hands and take a drink--that is the way to settle these
little matters. Come, Mr. Policeman, help me to pacify these two
hot-heads; what do you say to my recommendation, brandy and water
all round?"

"That would be the last thing that I should recommend," said Chester,
speaking in his usual bland and gentlemanly manner. "These two
persons, I doubt not, will listen to the reason without firing up
their blood with more strong drink."

"With more strong drink!" cried one of the men, laughing rudely as
he cast his antagonist carelessly from him; "why we haven't had a
drop yet. It was thirst, sheer thirst that made us both so savage.
Come, Smith, here is my hand. Let us drink and make up."

The man thus addressed rose from the cask against which he had been
thrown, and suddenly took the offered hand of his antagonist.

Chester saw that the quarrel, if it ever had been serious, was now
at an end, and turned to leave the store; but Jones, the owner,
followed him with an anxious face, and whispered that it was only
fear of the police that had so suddenly quieted the men, and besought
him not to withdraw till they were ready to leave the establishment.
Chester turned back; both the place and company were repugnant to
him, but it was his duty to remain, and he sat down regarding the
two men as they drank at the counter, boisterously knocking their
glasses together in token of renewed fellowship.

"Come, Mr. Policeman, take a glass," said Smith, who all the while
had been the most noisy. "You look pale as a ghost," and the man took
a glass half full of brandy and brought it to the stove by which
Chester had drawn his chair.

Chester did indeed look pale, for coming out of the clear night into
a room heated to suffocation by a close stove, and redolent with the
mingled fumes of tobacco smoke and alcohol, the atmosphere oppressed
him with a sickening sensation; his head began to reel, and he sat
unsteadily in his chair. Thus oppressed, he reached forth his hand
and lifted the glass to his lips. The scent of its contents, however,
warned him; he arose without tasting the brandy, and placed it on
the counter. Just then two or three persons came in from the street.
Jones and Smith exchanged triumphant glances, and Chester sat down
again, supporting his forehead upon one hand, sickened with the heat,
and becoming each moment more pallid.

"Come," said Smith, at length addressing his companion, "let us go
now, we can soon find a place where gentlemen can settle their
disputes without being hunted down by the police!" and the two went
out.

Jones hastily came round the counter and addressed Chester.

"They will get up a street fight," he said, with great apparent
anxiety. "Had you not better follow them?"

Chester arose with difficulty and left the store, scarcely conscious
of his own movements, for he was still faint from the changed
atmosphere. But the cold air revived him, and he walked on beneath
the old elm, passing the two men, who stood on the curb-stone leaning
against its trunk, apparently in excited conversation. The pavement
all around was one glaze of ice, and Chester was obliged to guard
his footsteps with great care, as he moved slowly forward. As he came
near the two men, one of them put forth his foot, and Chester fell
forward with a faint cry, striking his temples against the curb stone
with a violence that sent the broken ice in a shower over his head.

"Halloo! here is a fallen star," cried Smith, lifting his voice. The
dram-shop was flung open at the sound, and its owner came forth
followed by several persons who had entered the place just as Chester
left it.

They found the policeman stretched on the ice with the two men, who
had been the cause of his mishap, bending over him with that jeering
expression in their words and features, with which the coarse-minded
usually meet accidents which result from intoxication.

Chester was much hurt, but he had lost no blood, so the bystanders
turned away with a laugh, and he was left to the mercy of those two
evil men.




CHAPTER VII.

THE BIRTH-DAY FESTIVAL.


  Her soul was full of tender thought,
    Ardent and strong but gentle, too,
  Like gems, in purest gold o'er wrought,
    Or flowers that banquet on the dew.
  Love seemed more holy in her heart,
    Than human passions ever are;
  She took from Heaven its purest part,
    And found on earth its sweetest care.

It was Chester's birth-day, always a season of bright joy in his
little household. He had entirely recovered from the ill-effects of
his fall upon the ice. The little stranger, instead of being a burden
upon his narrow resources, became quite a help and comfort to them.
She had now been three weeks in the family, industrious as a bee,
meekly cheerful, and with a sort of homely sweetness in her manner
that won affection without effort. Never boisterous or obtrusive in
her desire to please she moved about the house like some meek and
good spirit, acting, not speaking, the soft gratitude with which her
little heart was brimming over. You could see it in her large and
humid eyes. You could feel it in the quick joy that came and went
over her face, when any one asked a service of her. She seemed
perfectly possessed of that most lovely of all earthly feelings, human
gratitude; yet she uttered but few words, and was always too busy
for extreme sadness.

Occupation, occupation!--what a glorious thing it is for the human
heart. Those who work hard seldom yield themselves entirely up to
fancied or real sorrow. When grief sits down, folds its hands, and
mournfully feeds upon its own tears, weaving the dim shadows, that
a little exertion might sweep away, into a funeral pall, the strong
spirit is shorn of its might, and sorrow becomes our master. When
troubles flow upon you, dark and heavy, toil not with the
waves--wrestle not with the torrent!--rather seek, by occupation,
to divert the dark waters that threaten to overwhelm you, into a
thousand channels which the duties of life always present. Before
you dream of it, those waters will fertilize the present, and give
birth to fresh flowers that may brighten the future--flowers that
will become pure and holy, in the sunshine which penetrates to the
path of duty, in spite of every obstacle. Grief, after all, is but
a selfish feeling, and most selfish is the man who yields himself
to the indulgence of any passion which brings no joy to his fellow
man.

If little Mary Fuller did not reason thus--poor thing, she was only
twelve years old--she felt thus, and a good heart is, after all, your
best philosopher.

She was grateful, and that sweet feeling is, in itself, almost a
happiness. So, in her meekness and her industry, this little girl
might have shamed the fortitude of many a stout man, for there are
no sufferings so sharp as those that sting our childhood, and hers,
both of soul and body, had been bitter indeed.

It would have done your heart good to witness the pleasant bustle
going on in the policeman's dwelling on his birth-day. Mary Fuller
entered into the preparations with delightful spirit. There was the
kitchen table, spread out with currants and raisins, and boxes of
sugar, and plates of butter--and there was Mrs. Chester, with the
sleeves of her calico dress rolled up from her white arms, and her
slender hands, all snowy with the flour she was measuring out in a
tea-cup, while her sweet smiling lips were in motion as she counted
off each cupful, now of sugar, now of fruit, and now of butter for
the birth-day cake. There was little Isabel beating up eggs in a great
China bowl, and laughing as she shook back her curls, that threatened
every moment to drop into the snowy froth.

Down on a little seat by the stove, crouched Mary Fuller, with her
lap full of black currants, looking so mild and tranquil as she
gathered up the fruit, and allowed it to flow from one thin hand to
the other, blowing away the dust with her mournful little mouth, and
lifting up her eyes to Mrs. Chester now and then, with a look of such
quiet and trusting affection.

And now Mrs. Chester lifted up the bright tin-pan half full of golden
and fruit-studded paste between both her hands, with a satisfied and
happy look. Mary Fuller quietly opened the stove door, and the
precious cake was soon browning over, and rising in a soft cone,
almost to the top of the oven. Every other instant Isabel would take
a peep in, and thus fill the room with luscious fragrance, and Mary
was full of curiosity, for the composition of a cake like that was
quite a miracle to her, poor thing!

Then Mrs. Chester could not quite conceal her anxiety that Isabel
might interrupt the baking by constantly opening the door. In short,
you have no idea what an interest was felt in that birth-day cake.
It kept them quite anxious and animated for a full hour.

Then all this suspense was followed by such delighted exclamations
when the cake came out, done to a turn, so high, so delicately brown,
and with a light golden fissure breaking through the warm swell, like
the furrow in a hill-side, betraying the perfect lightness and spongy
perfection at the centre--altogether, the whole thing was quite a
household picture, a pleasant domestic scene, full of spirit and
happiness.

But this was only a preliminary of the day's work. There was the
frosting to put on, and there was a pair of plump little pullets
waiting to be stuffed, and so many things to be done, that with
bringing out little round wooden boxes and bright tin pans, and forks
and spoons, and putting them up again, everything was kept in a state
of pleasant excitement the whole day.

At nightfall it was perfectly surprising, the bower that lovely
housewife and her children had made of the room. The muslin curtains
were bordered with wreaths of evergreens; festoons of hemlock and
feathery pine tufts fell along the snow-white wall. On a little shelf
under the window, stood a bird cage sheltered by a miniature forest
of tea-roses and ivy geraniums. The golden feathers of its inmate
gleamed out beautifully from among the leaves and crimson flowers;
for the genial warmth seemed to have brought all the buds into blossom
at once, and there was a perfect flush of them among the glossy and
deep green leaves.

As if quite conscious that there was a birth-day developing in all
these cheerful preparations, the bird was in a joyous state of
excitement, and seemed to enter, with all its little musical soul,
into the spirit of the thing. Instead of going sleepily to his perch
as the sun went down, he kept chirping about, hopping hither and
thither, flinging off the husks from his seed on the bottom of the
cage, or standing on his perch with his head on one side, and eyeing
the tea roses askance, as if questioning them regarding this unusual
commotion. Then, as if satisfied with the blushing silence of the
flowers, he would hop upon his perch and break into a gush of song
that made the leaves around him tremble again, having, to all
appearances, made up his birdly mind not to give up before midnight
at the furthest.

Now everything was ready, save some petty arrangements of the
table-top which were in a state of progression.

Mary Fuller, arrayed in a Marino dress, almost as good as new, and
with her hair neatly braided, was busy with Isabel's curls, rolling
their glossy blackness delightedly around her finger, and dropping
them in shining masses over those dimpled shoulders, with far more
exulting pride than the little beauty felt herself.

She was a lovely creature, that fair Isabel, more beautiful from
contrast with the sallow child that bent over her. The pretty pink
frock looped back from those snowy shoulders, with knots of ribbon,
her embroidered pantalets peeping from beneath it, and those dainty
little slippers on her feet--altogether, the two girls made a charming
picture. The Canary stopped singing to watch them, giving out a chirp
of admiration now and then, as if he approved of the whole thing,
but did not care to make a scene about it.

At last, Mrs. Chester came forth, her cheeks all in a glow of blushes,
for she was rather shy of appearing before her children in that
pretty, white-muslin dress, fastened over the bosom with bows of pink
ribbon, and with a belt of the same color girding her waist.

The girls started up with exclamations of delight, for this dress
took them by surprise, and in order to get clear of her awkwardness,
Mrs. Chester kissed them both, while the bird went off in a fit of
musical enthusiasm quite astounding, hopping frantically about his
cage and throwing off gushes of song till his golden throat seemed
ready to burst with a flood of melody.

Mary Fuller stood, after the first outbreak of admiration, looking
wistfully from her benefactress to the crimson roses. Her keen sense
of the beautiful was excited.

"May I?" she said, softly bending down one of the crimson flowers.

Mrs. Chester smiled, and Mary broke off the half-open blossom.

"Please let _me_ put it in."

Again Mrs. Chester smiled, and sat down in her rocking chair, while
Mary placed the rose among the snowy folds on her bosom, and Isabel
hovered near, admiring the effect.

"Isn't she beautiful!" exclaimed Mary, gently exultant, standing back
to enjoy the contrast of the crimson leaves and the white muslin.

"Isn't she?" cried Isabel, in all the flush of her young beauty,
"Isn't she, my own, dear, pretty mother?" and she held up her arms
for an embrace.

Mary sighed very gently, for she thought of her mother.

And now four crystal lamps were lighted, two upon the mantel-piece,
and two before the looking-glass, which of course made four by
reflection, and a splendid illumination all this light made among
the roses and evergreens.

There was nothing more to arrange, so Mrs. Chester returned to her
rocking-chair. Isabel hung about her, sometimes with an arm around
her neck, sometimes playing with the folds of her dress. After a
little hesitation, Mary drew her stool to the other side and sat
there, smiling softly and with her eyes brimful of contentment, as
Mrs. Chester laid one hand kindly upon her head, while with the other
she caressed the beautiful Isabel. Thus forming a group that might
have served our inimitable Terry for a picture of Charity, Mrs.
Chester waited for her company.

And for what company was all this preparation made?

In the third story of the house lived a poor artist, whose eyesight
had become so dim, that he was only capable of doing the very coarsest
work. Sometimes a theatrical scene, or a rude transparency gave him
temporary support; but the little that he was able to do in this way
could not have kept him free from debt, humble as his mode of life
was, had he not possessed some other means of subsistence. His family
consisted of an only son, apparently not more than eleven or twelve
years of age. He was some years older than that, but the extreme
sensitiveness of his character and ill health gave unusual delicacy
to his appearance. A distant relative of the artist lived with these
two as a housekeeper, and by her needle managed to contribute
something toward the general support. The widow was not yet an old
woman, but loneliness and poverty had exhausted the little
cheerfulness of character that she once possessed. So pale and weary
with toil, she lived on, centering all the hopes and energies of her
dull life in the artist and his motherless boy, the object of his
especial love.

This old man--this worn, tried woman, whose toil was so constant,
and whose amusements were so few--and the delicate boy--these were
the guests that Mrs. Chester expected. Even in her amusements she
loved to blend the exquisite joy of charity. With every dainty
prepared that day, she had given some gentle thought of the rare
pleasure that it would bring to the old man and his family.

In the lower story of the house there was also a family, to whom Mrs.
Chester had extended her invitation. It was her wish that every one
sheltered under the roof with her husband should be as joyous and
happy as she was; but she entertained serious doubts whether this
invitation would be accepted.

The man in the attic sometimes went an errand or carried in a load
of wood, thus cheerfully earning a few shillings for the family at
home. The man on the first floor kept a small thread-needle
establishment. The difference was considerable, and the aristocratic
pride of the man who sold needles, might revolt at the idea of sitting
at the same table with the man who carried in wood.

Misgivings on this subject gave a slight shade of anxiety to Mrs.
Chester's sweet countenance, as she sat waiting for her guests. She
could just hear the two chickens that lay cosily, wing to wing, in
the oven, simmering in their warm nest. The potatoes in a sauce-pan
in front of the stove were slowly lifting up the lid and pouring their
steam about the edges; and everything promised so well that she began
to feel quite anxious that none of her invited guests should be
absent.

There really was some cause for apprehension, for the thread-needle
man stationed before the parlor grate below was that moment holding
conjugal council with a tall, dark-featured woman, on the very subject
which cast the one little shadow over Mrs. Chester's expectations.
Dear to him, as the apple of his eye, was the pride of his station;
but then the needle-merchant had members of the corporeal frame,
petted and prompted till it was difficult to resist them. He loved
his dignity much, but dignity was, after all, an abstraction, while
in a good supper there was something substantial. He had returned
home fully resolved not to accept Mrs. Chester's invitation, and in
this his tall wife reluctantly concurred, though a black silk dress
and a gay cap fluttering with straw-colored ribbons, revealed very
plainly that her own inclinations had pointed the other way.

The Chesters were pleasant people, and she felt that it would be
rather tantalizing to sit down stairs alone all the evening, while
they enjoyed themselves heart and soul above.

When aristocracy is a matter of opinion, not of power, every man of
course feels compelled to guard his claim to position with peculiar
watchfulness; so with a benign conviction that he and his taller half
had made a laudable sacrifice for the good of society, the little
needle-merchant and his wife sat down together over a weak cup of
tea, feeling rather miserable and disconsolate. They had no children;
and a social evening away from home now and then, was a relief to
the conjugal tete-a-tetes, which will sometimes become a little
tiresome when married people have nothing but themselves to talk
about.

While the worthy needle-merchant and his wife were sitting at the
table the outer door opened, and a light, quick footstep sounded along
the hall and ascended the stairs, seemingly two steps at a time. There
was something so buoyant and cheerful in this springing footstep,
that it quite aroused the needle-merchant, who got up and opening
the door carefully, peeped into the hall.

"It is Chester just coming home," he said, thrusting his rosy face
through the opening. "How happy the fellow looks. Hark! here comes
his wife to meet him all in white--upon my word she is a handsome
woman--and here is the little girl bounding forward with her arms
out--and, and--really, my dear, it is refreshing to hear a kiss like
that."

Here the little man turned ardently back, and standing on his toes
made a fruitless attempt to reach the tall lady's face with his little
pursed-up mouth, which his better half resented with great dignity.
"There, they have gone in now," continued the little man, going
sheepishly to the door again. "They cannot have closed the door
though--Laura--Laura! come here, is not this tantalizing?--turkey
or chickens, one or the other, I stake my reputation upon it,
and--hot--reeking with gravy and brown as a chestnut, nothing less
could send forth this delicious scent. What do you say, Laura? Speak
the word and I am half a mind to go up, notwithstanding the wood
carrier!"

"You know he does other things. I dare say it is not often that he
stoops to this!" said the wife brightening up and beginning to arrange
her cap before the glass.

"Probably not--besides he really is a gentlemanly old fellow enough.
I dare say he would not presume upon it if we did sit down with him
for once."

"Not in the least," replied the wife, fastening a cameo pin, as large
as the palm of her hand into the worked collar which she had just
arranged about her neck. "It will be our fault if he does! You know
it is easy to keep up a certain reserve, even at the same table!"

"Certainly--certainly--my dear, as you say, we can be _with_ them and
not _of_ them. Just hand out my satin stock from that drawer and give
my coat a dash with the hand brush!" and inhaling a deep breath, the
little man reluctantly closed the door and began a hasty and vigorous
toilet.

You never in your life saw a finer-looking fellow than Chester was
that night as he kissed his wife, gave the beautiful Isabel a toss
in the air, and patted little Mary on the head, all in the same
minute.

"Why Jane, what a winter bower you have made of the room," he cried,
his eyes sparkling with delight and surprise as he glanced at the
evergreens, whose soft shadows were trembling like pencil-work on
the walls. Why the very Canary seems all in a flutter of delight!
Cake too, frosted like a snow-bank, and--here he opened the stove
door, "have you been among the fairies, wife! I for one cannot tell
where you raised the money for all this?"

"Oh, yes, we have been among the fairies, haven't we, little Mary,"
cried Mrs. Chester, delighted with her husband's spirits, "the Jew
fairies that give out collars to stitch, and cloth caps to make."

Nothing but a tear breaking through the happy flash of John Chester's
eyes, could have rendered them so full of joyous tenderness.

"And so you have done all this for me. You and the poor little angel?
Why you must have worked night and day!--and Isabel, what portion
of the work has my lady-bird done?" added the happy man, sitting down
and placing the child on his knee.

"Oh, she has done a great deal!" said Mary in a low but eager voice,
creeping to Chester's side. "You have no idea how very handy she is
about the house, has he, Mrs. Chester?"

Mrs. Chester laughed and shook her head; but further than this she
had no time to speak, for that moment the old man from up stairs came
in, looking quite neat and gentlemanly in his black silk cravat, and
his darned and well-brushed coat. He led by the hand a tall delicate
boy with light brown hair and sad blue eyes; a smile seemed struggling
with a look of habitual pain on his face. He sat down and glanced
around, greeting Mary with a wan smile. The widow followed; her dress
was poverty-stricken but very neat, and upon her face was a look of
patient endurance, indescribably touching.

"I have invited them to supper," whispered Mrs. Chester to her
husband. "They came so soon I had no time to tell you. The people
down stairs, I expect them, too."

Chester comprehended it all in an instant. You would have thought
by the way he placed chairs and shook hands with his guests, that
he had been expecting them with the utmost impatience. His manner
brought a cordial smile to the old man's lips, and even the face of
the widow brightened with a pleasant glow.

"Let Joseph sit here," said Mary Fuller, rising from her stool with
moist eyes, as she saw a spasm of pain pass over the lad's face.
"Perhaps he would rather stay by me."

The boy lifted his blue eyes to her face, and his heart yearned toward
one who bore such traces of having suffered like himself.

"I should be glad to sit by her," he said, appealing to his father.
"She knows what it is."

The next instant his delicate hand was clasped within hers, and Mary
was soothing him in a low voice that sounded like the whisper of an
angel.

The table was spread, and the young fowls, plump with a rich load
of dressing, were placed upon it.

These were supported by a fine oyster pie, plates of vegetables, blood
red beets, and the greenest pickles, with a dish of cranberry sauce,
while a bunch of golden green celery curled in crisp masses over the
crystal goblet that occupied the centre of the table. The little
candle-stand on one side, supported the fruit cake, all one crust
of snowy sugar, with the most delicate little green wreath lying
around the edge. Over all this the four lamps shed their light, which
the looking-glass did its best to multiply. Indeed, nothing could
be more perfect than the whole arrangement, except it might be the
fullness of content which sparkled and shone over the face of everyone
present.

Just as the company were all standing--for each guest had resigned
a chair, which was placed by the table--the needle-merchant and his
wife made their advent, arm in arm, all pompous with a sense of
personal importance, and looking stiffly condescending as they bowed
to the old gentleman and the widow.

But it was quite astonishing how soon the bustle of sitting down to
supper, the cheerful faces and the fragrant steam that rose from the
plump pullet as Chester thrust his fork into its bosom, seemed to
soften down and carry off all their superfluous dignity. Before the
little needle-merchant knew it, he found himself quite interested
in the old man at his elbow, for after the ladies, Chester had helped
the artist first, and on his plate was a choice morsel of the
chicken's liver which made the little merchant's mouth water.

Now what does the old gentleman do but hand over this plate, with
a bow, to his next neighbor, and so handsomely, too, that it was quite
impossible for the little man to resist good fellowship a moment
longer? As the coveted morsel melted away in his mouth, the pride
fled from his heart, and in less than three minutes he was the most
natural and happy person at the table. It was delightful to hear him
complimenting Mrs. Chester, while he helped the children good
naturedly, as if he had been the father of a large and uproarious
family for years! Indeed, he was quite surprised at it himself
afterward, but just then it seemed the most natural thing in the
world.

There was room enough for all. There was pleasure for all. Even the
suffering boy had sunshine in his eyes and smiles upon his mouth,
as he lifted that delicate face to his widow friend; and for the first
time in months, her pale cheeks grew red, and she met the boy's glance
with a smile that did not threaten to be quenched in tears the next
instant.

Mrs. Chester luxuriated in all this happiness as a flower brightens
in the sunshine. She seemed to grow more beautiful every moment; the
needle-merchant told her so. Chester only laughed, and his own wife
did not frown, but glanced complacently down to her cameo breast-pin,
feeling confident that there she could defy competition.

The supper was over, the table cleared away, and around the bright
stove they all gathered in a circle, chatting, laughing and telling
stories. Here the old artist's talent came in play, and he made even
the tall lady shake with merriment behind her broad cameo; and the
gentle boy who had crept close to Mary Fuller again, was absolutely
heard to laugh aloud, while Mary's smile was softer and sweeter than
Isabel's shouts of merriment.

"I say," whispered Joseph to Mary Fuller, "how happy and bright father
is--wouldn't it be pleasant if we could do something to make all the
rest happy as he does?"

"But we don't know how, like him," answered Mary.

"I am worse than that, it makes people sad to look at me, but you
have done something, I dare say, to help make them happy?"

"I helped get the supper and make that," said Mary, pointing to the
birth-day cake which still lay glistening white beneath its wreath
of evergreens.

"Ah, that was a great deal for you. Now what if I try a little? Bend
down your head. I have a violin up stairs. Father bought it for me
new year's day. It did not cost much, but there is music in it, and
I have learned to play a little. Now I will just steal away and bring
it down without letting them see me. Won't it astonish them to hear
the music burst up all at once from our corner?"

The boy's eyes sparkled, and he seemed quite animated with his little
plot.

"That will be pleasant," replied Mary, equally delighted with the
idea. "Let me go! Where shall I find the violin?"

"In the corner cupboard--there is a little fire-light--you will not
miss it," answered the lad, smiling gratefully.

Mary stole away and soon returned with the violin. She contrived to
reach the boy without being seen, and the two sat close together,
while he noiselessly tried the strings and fixed the bow.

There was a momentary hush in the conversation.

"Now!" whispered Mary, "now!"

The boy drew his bow, and such a burst of music poured from the
strings, that even Mary started with astonishment.

"Ha, my son!" said the artist, "that was well thought of! now do your
best!"

The boy answered only with a smile, but his slender fingers flew up
and down on the strings, the bow flashed across them like lightning,
and the apartment rung with music.

Spite of all its good resolutions, the Canary bird had gone to sleep,
with its head under one wing, but with the first note of music it
was all in a flutter of delight, and set up an opposition to the
violin that threatened to rend its quivering little form in twain.

Isabel, light and graceful as the bird, sprang from her seat and began
to waltz about the room, her curls floating in the air, and her cheeks
bright as a ripe peach. She looked like a fairy excited by the music.

"Come, what if we all get up a dance?" said Chester, approaching the
needle-merchant's wife.

She looked at her husband.

"A capital idea!" cried the little man, all in a glow, seizing upon
the hand of the widow.

"Indeed, I--I--my dancing days are over," faltered the widow, half
withdrawing her hand, but looking provokingly irresolute.

"Oh, aunty, let me see you dance once, only this once!" cried the
boy, breaking the strain of his music.

The widow turned a look of tenderness upon her charge, and with a
blush on her cheek was led to the floor.

"They want another couple--who will dance with me?" said Mrs. Chester,
casting a smiling challenge at the old gentleman.

"Oh, father, do," cried the boy, "see, they cannot get along without
you."

"I shall put you all out--I haven't taken a step in twenty years,"
pleaded the old man.

"Never mind, we will teach you--we will all teach you--so come along,"
broke from half a dozen voices, and Mrs. Chester laughingly took the
old man captive, leading him to the floor with a look of playful
triumph.

Isabel, after a vain effort to persuade Mary to join her, took a side
by herself, quite capable of dancing enough for two at least.

Then the violin sent forth an air that kindled the blood even in that
old man's veins. The dancers put themselves in motion--right and
left--ladies' chain. It went off admirably. The old man was rather
stiff and awkward at first, but the young folks soon broke him in
and he turned, now the little girls then Mrs. Chester, and then the
tall lady with the cameo; true she was on the side, but then the old
gentleman was not particular, and his ladies' chain became rather
an intricate affair at last, he added so many superfluous links to
it.

But nothing could daunt him after he once got into the spirit of it,
and he went through the whole like an old hero; the only difficulty
was, he never knew when to stop.

Just in the height of the dance, when the needle-merchant was all
in a glow, balancing to every lady, and getting up a sort of
extemporaneous affair, made from old remembrances of "The Cheat" and
"The Virginia Reel," the whole company stopped short, and he
exclaimed--

"Bless my soul!"

And drawing forth a red silk handkerchief, he made a motion, as if
his forehead wanted dusting.

"Bless my soul!" he repeated, "Laura, my dear, have the goodness to
look, my love."

Mrs. Peters turned, and spite of her cameo defences, blushed guiltily.

"Dear me, my nephew, Frederick Farnham, who would have expected this?"
she exclaimed, instantly assuming her dignity, and gliding from among
the dancers.

"I couldn't help it, Aunt Peters, I know it is very impertinent for
me to follow you up here, but how could you expect me to stay down
yonder, with the floor trembling over head, and that violin--? I beg
your pardon, sir," continued young Farnham, addressing Chester, "but
the fact is, everything was so gloomy down stairs, and so brilliant;
up here besides you left the door open as if you'd made up your mind
to tempt a fellow into committing an impertinence."

"Don't think of it, there's no intrusion--my wife has found a
birth-day, and is making the most of it," answered Chester, advancing
toward the door with his hand frankly extended.

The youth stepped forward, and the light fell upon his face. His eyes
lighted up splendidly as they fell on Chester.

"What, my fine fellow, is it you?" he said, with a dash of young
Americanism that was only frank, not assuming, while Chester
exclaimed--

"I'm glad to see you--heartily glad to see you--come in, come in."

"Allow me," said Mrs. Peters, with a stately wave of the hand, "Mr.
Chester, allow me to present Mr. Frederick Farnham, my nephew, and
only son of the Mayor of New York--Mrs. Chester, Mr. Farnham."

"Never mind all about that, aunt," said the boy, blushing at his
pompous introduction, "this gentleman and I have met before--he knows
my father."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Peters, coming out from his retirement, "I am
delighted to hear it; nothing but this was wanting, my dear Chester.
I'm charmed to have been found enjoying your hospitality. Laura, my
dear, we are both charmed; my brother-in-law, the mayor, will be
charmed also--in short, Fred, we are having a charming time of it."

"I'm sure of it," answered Fred Farnham, pressing his uncle, and
looking earnestly at Mary Fuller till his face became quite serious,
then, turning to Chester, he said in a low voice, "so you keep the
poor girl; I'm glad of it--that was what brought me here."

No one had observed the artist while this interruption took place;
but as the youth stepped into the light and spoke, a vertigo seized
upon the old man, and staggering back to the wall he leaned against
it, pale and with a wild expression in his eyes. When Mrs. Peters
proclaimed the lad's name this strange agitation subsided somewhat
and took a shade of sadness, as if some train of thought had been
aroused that weighed down his spirits. He seemed to forget that his
partner waited, and sat down by the window, sighing heavily.

Mrs. Chester remarked this forgetfulness, and with a graceful smile
invited young Farnham to take the place which the old man had
abandoned. Fred smiled his assent, and the dance went on again; but
just as the young musician began to play, there came a knock at the
street door. Isabel ran down to open it, and came back with a letter
in her hand.

"It is for you, papa," she said, holding up the letter.

"Very well, put it on the mantel-piece. Some direction from the
captain or chief, I suppose," said Chester. "Come, Isabel, take your
place."

The little girl ran to her partner, and the dancing commenced again.

During this interruption, young Farnham happened to come close up
to the artist, and he was struck by the earnest gaze which the old
man fixed on him. Some strange magnetic influence was in the glance,
for it thrilled him from head to foot. He was seized with an
unaccountable desire to hear the old man speak, but all his natural
self-command forsook him. He could not find the courage to utter a
word. Those dark, earnest eyes seemed to have taken away his strength.

Joseph saw the strange pallor that had come upon his father's face,
and, laying down his violin, crossed the room.

"What is the matter, are you ill, father?" he inquired in his usual
low voice, "or is it only the light? I thought you looked pale across
the room."

The artist cast quick wild glances from his son to young Farnham.
At last he drew a heavy breath, and turned with a bewildered air to
his son.

"What did you ask, Joseph?"

"Are you in pain? What is the matter, father?" repeated the lad.

"Nothing--no; I--I am not used to this, you know," faltered the old
man. "Do not mind me, I am well."

Joseph went away, but cast wistful glances at his father over his
violin. According to the unaccountable desire that had seized him,
young Farnham heard the old man's voice. It ran through his veins
with a glow, as if he had drained a glass of old wine, and it was
some moments before he felt the thrill leave his nerves. Joseph took
up his violin, but anxiety had depressed him, and his music lost its
cheerfulness.

The dancers took their places, but Fred Farnham still lingered by
the artist. Another strange impulse seized him. He obeyed it and
touched the hand that lay upon the old man's knee.

The artist started, lifted his eyes and a smile broke over his face.

"Excuse me," said the youth deprecatingly, "I did not intend it."

Still the artist kept his eyes upon the boy, without speaking, but
the smile grew sad as he gazed; and when Fred turned to go away, the
hand he had touched was held eagerly forth.

"Don't--don't leave me yet," said the old man in a low, pathetic
voice.

"I will come back again," said the youth gently. "I could not help
it if I wished."

Again the old man smiled, and, bowing his head, allowed the youth
to regain his partner.

When the set broke up it was to assemble round the fruitcake, which
was cut up by Chester in broad, liberal slices, and then, after
another dance, and a plaintive song from the widow, Chester's
birth-day party broke up, leaving him alone with the family.

The old artist waited at the head of the stairs, and young Farnham,
who had remained a moment to speak with Chester, found him leaning
against the banisters as he came out.

"Good night," said the young lad with gentle respect, pausing in hope
of being addressed.

The artist took the extended hand, and held it between his, without
speaking. Fred felt those old hands tremble.

"Shall I never see you again?" inquired the artist.

"Will you let me come and see you?" asked the lad joyfully.

"Come, come! it will be like the break of day after a dark night."

"I will come," said the youth earnestly.

Still the artist kept the boy's hand in his clasp. At length he bent
forward and kissed the lad upon his forehead.

"God bless you--the God of Heaven bless you!" he said in a low, solemn
voice, and the old man glided away through the dark hall, leaving
Frederick strongly affected by the interview.

With all her cheerfulness, Mrs. Chester was a little weary after her
guests departed, and leaned against the mantel-piece, longing to sink
into the rocking-chair which the old man had just abandoned.

Chester approached his wife, and saw the letter lying at her elbow.
A moment of unaccountable dread came over him, but taking the note
in his hand he broke the seal. Mrs. Chester was looking at him as
he read the letter, she saw his face turn pale, then his eyes began
to flash.

"What is it! what evil news does the letter bring?" she faltered out,
for his countenance frightened her.

Chester crushed the letter in his hand.

"I thought that man would follow me!" he said bitterly--"that
cold-blooded, relentless Mayor!"

"What has he done? Do not keep me in this terrible suspense, Chester,"
said the anxious woman.

"I am ordered to appear before him to answer a charge of drunkenness,"
replied Chester, forcing himself to speak calmly, though the huskiness
of his voice betrayed the fierce struggle which the effort cost him.

"Drunkenness! you!" and a smile of proud scorn swept over the features
of that noble young wife.

"Let us go to rest," said Chester, taking her hand. "Let us try and
forget this letter!"

"We were so happy only half an hour since!" said Jane Chester, placing
her hand in that of her husband, and they disappeared in the little
bedroom.

"But for me, but for me, this had not been!" murmured poor little
Mary Fuller, cowering down by the stove and locking both little hands
over her forehead. "Oh, if I could help it now. If I had never rung
at that cruel man's door. What shall I do--what can I do!"

"Come, Mary--come roll up my hair--mother has forgotten it," said
Isabel, standing in the closet door where the two girls slept
together, and yawning heavily--for the child was weary with coming
sleep. "What a splendid night we have had--only I am so tired!"

Mary arose meekly, and sitting down on the bed, began to arrange
Isabel for the night. The eyes of the little beauty were heavy, and
she did not observe the tearful depression that hung over her patient
friend. But during all that night, the beautiful eyes of Isabel alone
in that humble dwelling, were visited with sleep. It was a weary,
weary night for Chester and his wife; but most unhappy of all, was
the poor child whom their charity had warmed into life.




CHAPTER VIII.

CHESTER'S TRIAL.


  In his dusty web the spider lay--
    All bloated and black was he,
  And he watched his victim pass that way,
    With a quiver of horrid glee!

A few mornings before the little birth-day party described in our
last chapter, two men were seen to enter the Mayor's office,
accompanied by the Alderman, whom we have seen closeted with him
before. The Mayor was alone in his private room, and the Alderman
left his two companions in the outer office, while he held a moment's
private conversation with his honor. There was a sort of boisterous
exultation in the Alderman's manner, which rather displeased the
Mayor, who looked upon the exhibition of any feeling as a weakness,
but he received his friend with his usual bland smile, and requested
him to be seated.

The Alderman drew his leather-cushioned seat close to the Mayor, and
laid his broad red hand on his honor's knee.

"They are here--both the witnesses are here ready to enter a
complaint--I told you they were just the men to nail this Chester?"

"Here!" said the Mayor, "my friend--my good fellow--you should not
have brought the witnesses here. In all these doubtful cases--do you
understand?--_I_ never receive a direct complaint. It must come
through the Chief of Police. This one especially. He must call upon
me officially to act!"

"The chief!" exclaimed the Alderman, in dismay, "why Chester is one
of his especial pets. It will never do to entrust the business with
him."

"Oh! have no fear. His duty forces him to present the complaint, when
once entered, before him. Further than that, he has no power, no voice
in the matter. It rests by law with the Mayor alone. He is
judge--juror. He is _the law_ in these cases, you know."

"Then you think we may venture the case with the chief?" said the
Alderman, still doubtful. "He will do all in his power to save
Chester, I am certain."

"But he has no power! He has no right even to hear the evidence,
unless I desire it. His interference is a mere form--but it has a
good appearance--half these fellows know nothing about the law, and
when we break them it casts some of the odium on him. It gives him
an appearance of responsibility, but not a particle of power. Take
your witnesses to the chief--to the chief, my dear fellow, and leave
the rest to me--_to the law_."

The Alderman rejoined his witnesses, and went to the chief's office.
From that office, twenty-four hours after, was sent the letter which
Chester received on the night of his birth-day.

The day of trial came. Within the railing of the chief's office sat
his honor, the Mayor, calmly shaving down the point of a pencil, which
he tried from time to time on a sheet of paper that lay on the desk
before him. At his elbow was the clerk, with a quire of foolscap
neatly arranged, and holding a pen idly in his hand.

In a little room back of the office sat the Chief of Police--his
portly person filling the circumference of a comfortable office chair,
and his jovial, good-humored countenance somewhat clouded with anxiety
for the fate of the noble young man on trial, for he had learned both
to love and respect the accused. His presence was evidently annoying
to his honor, who dreaded the shrewd observation, the keen knowledge
of men and things which would be brought to bear on the examination.
He would rather have encountered the whole bar of New York, than the
sharp, but apparently careless scrutiny of this one man. But there
sat the chief just within the shadow of his private closet, the star
of office glittering on his broad chest, linked to his garments by
a chain of massive gold. The walls behind him were garnished with
heavy oaken clubs, highly polished hand-cuffs and iron shackles, with
various other grim insignia of his office.

In vain the Mayor moved restlessly in his chair. In vain he turned
his cold and repelling look toward the immovable chief. You might
have seen a covert smile now and then gleam in the eyes of that
obstinate functionary, but otherwise he seemed profoundly unconscious
that his presence was in the least disagreeable. The Mayor did not
venture upon the unprecedented step of requiring him to withdraw,
so after a good deal of meaningless delay, the trial went on.

Chester stood without the railing which encircled the Mayor and his
clerk. His air was firm, his countenance calm, and almost haughty.
He awaited the proceedings with quiet indignation. Behind him stood
the two men whom he had followed from the dram-shop on the night of
his fall, and in a corner of the office sat Jones, the liquor dealer,
with two or three persons entirely unknown to Chester.

The Mayor lifted his eyes, but they glanced beyond Chester. With all
his coolness he had not the nerve to look directly into the proud
and searching eyes bent so calmly on him.

"Is your counsel here, Mr. Chester?" inquired his honor.

"I am here, needing no other counsel, if I am to have a fair trial,"
replied Chester, firmly.

"I hope you do not doubt that your trial will be a fair one!" said
the Mayor, sharpening his pencil afresh, for he wanted some occupation
for both eyes and hands.

Chester smiled with so much reproachful scorn, that the Mayor felt
it without turning his glance that way.

"I am waiting," said Chester, "for proof of the charges that have
been preferred against me!"

At a sign from the Mayor, the man Smith came forward and was placed
under oath. Chester's eyes were upon him as he touched the book, and
the man turned visibly pale. But in his false oath--for the man
perjured himself in the first sentence--he gained more courage.

"Chester," he said, "had entered the dram-shop, where he and his
friend"--here the man pointed to his accomplice--"were quietly passing
an hour before going to fulfill an engagement. Here he spent perhaps
half an hour, drinking brandy-and-water by the stove. They had noticed
him particularly, knowing it to be against the law for policemen to
indulge in drinking while on duty. The witness went out with his
companion, leaving Chester by the stove, evidently much affected by
what he had drank. As he and his companion stood beneath an old tree
that grew in front of the liquor store, Chester came forth, reeling
in his walk, and after a vain effort to maintain his foothold, fell
upon the pavement wholly intoxicated. Several other persons saw him
in this position, but the witness and his friend led him home, and
consigned him to the care of his wife."

It was a plausible perjury, and several innocent persons came forward
to strengthen it. They had seen Chester down upon the ice, and had
been told that he was intoxicated; so in good faith, and with no
intention of wrong, they corroborated the treacherous story that was
to destroy a good name.

Chester stood by as this story was artfully strengthened by the
sweet-toned and subtle questionings of the Mayor. His face was very
pale, and he trembled from head to foot with honest and stern
anger--nay, he felt something of horror, something unselfish, in
analyzing the cold-blooded craft, and unflinching perjury that had
been brought to bear upon him. There was absolute sublimity in his
pale silence, as he allowed witness after witness to pass from the
box unchallenged--unquestioned. And all this foul perjury the clerk
registered down, and the Alderman who had arranged the charges stood
by to hear.

Then Chester was called upon for his defence. He stood upright,
grasping the railing with his right hand. His voice was low and
deep-toned as a bell; it made the Mayor start with its clear,
searching accents. He told the truth, the simple, natural truth, as
it has been given to the reader, but with eloquence, and energy which
the pen has no power to describe.

"That man," he said, turning as he stood, and pointing his finger
at the perjured Smith, "that man--let him step forward and tell the
story he has sworn to, with his face lifted to mine, eye to eye, with
the man he accuses. If he can do this, I ask no other defence. Let
him say who it is that has instigated him to heap this foul wrong
upon an innocent man, what is to be his reward--whose deeper and more
subtle enmity he is working out! Let him but speak these things with
his eye looking into mine, and I am content."

The craven thus addressed, did look in Chester's eyes as a bird gazes
upon the eye of a serpent; he could not do otherwise--his face, his
very mouth were white; he trembled from head to foot. Conscience
tugging at his evil heart, had well-nigh dragged forth the truth,
but the cold, low voice of the Mayor, drove it back again, even from
his pallid lips.

"The witness has told his story under oath--others have substantiated
it. You had the right to question him then. There is no reason why
he should undergo a second examination."

This speech had its desired effect. Smith drew a deep breath, and
putting on an air of dogged bravado, looked round at his companions
like a mastiff who had been just rescued from a fight that threatened
to destroy him. The Mayor fell to sharpening his pencil again, and
the Alderman made an effort to open a little gate in the corner of
the railing, and would have approached his honor. But the constraining
look with which his attempt to open the gate was received by that
prudent functionary, checked him. The Mayor felt that any appearance
of understanding even with the Alderman, might be perilous, while
the Chief sat regarding the proceedings with such real interest and
apparent unconcern.

"And have you nothing else to offer--no witnesses?" said the Mayor,
addressing Chester.

"None!" answered Chester, wiping the drops from his forehead. "I have
told the truth; if that is not believed all the witnesses on earth
would be of no avail."

Then came from an outer chamber, grated by the iron door of a cell
where chance prisoners were sometimes locked, and hung with gilded
stars, and firemen's banners, a young figure diminutive, and of pale
and sickly features.

"Mary, my poor child!" said Chester, but she only lifted her large
eyes to his an instant, and going up to the railing held to it with
her hand.

"May I be sworn as those men have been?" she said, addressing the
startled Mayor in the same sweet tones that had claimed his compassion
months before.

"You! what can you know of the matter?" said his honor sharply, and
almost thrown off his guard.

"Not much, but something I do know," answered the child meekly. "May
I speak?"

"But you are too young--how old are you?" cried the Mayor, hoping
to have found a legal reason for sending away the obtrusive little
imp, as he called the child in his heart.

"I am twelve, sir--just twelve."

The Mayor cast an uneasy glance at the Chief's closet and then at
the child.

"Sir," said Chester, "I do not know what this poor child desires to
say, but it is my wish that she be heard."

"If she is offered as a witness there is no disputing her right to
speak," replied his honor, but with a disturbed countenance, and
taking a little worn Bible, marked with a broad cross from the desk
before him, his honor held it toward the child.

She took the Bible between both her hands and pressed her lips
reverently upon it.

"Now," said the Mayor, "what do you wish to say?"

"It was so still out yonder that I could not help but hear--poor Mrs.
Chester was very anxious, and I thought perhaps some one might give
me good news to carry home."

"This has nothing to do with the matter, child."

"I know," replied the little girl, meeting the Mayor's rebuff with
her usual humility. "But I thought perhaps you might ask how I came
by the door. Well, sir, I heard what these men said about Mr. Chester.
I knew their voices, sir, for I have heard them before, on the night
they were talking about, as they stood under the great elm tree
waiting for Mr. Chester to come out."

"The great elm tree--and how came you there, Mary?" exclaimed Chester,
greatly surprised by the child's appearance.

"Do you remember, sir, that you were complaining and quite ill that
night before you went out? Mrs. Chester felt very anxious about him,
sir," continued the child, reminded that it was her duty to address
the Mayor. "We sat up together sewing, and after he went out I saw
the tears come into Mrs. Chester's eyes, and once or twice they fell
upon her work. She was crying because her husband--oh, if you only
knew how good he is--was obliged to go out in such bitter cold
weather, when his cough was coming on again. I saw what she was
fretting about, and so as he had been too ill to eat supper, I asked
her to let me make a cup of warm coffee and carry it out to him on
his beat. She would not let me make the coffee, but the idea pleased
her and she made it herself, and poured it into a little covered
pitcher, while I put on a hood and shawl. I knew the way, sir, and
was not in the least afraid of the night or anything else, for the
stars were out and nobody ever thinks of harming a little girl like
me. Some pity, and some laugh; but I am never afraid of real harm
even in the night. I said this to Mrs. Chester, for she did not like
to have me go out alone. She kissed me and said I might go, for God
was sure to take care of me anywhere. Well, sir, I went on, up one
street and down another very slow, for the ice was slippery. Then
I saw Mr. Chester standing on a corner and looking toward the windows
of a store, over which was a great elm tree all dripping with ice.
I knew him by the way he stood and by his star which shone in the
moonlight. Just as I was crossing over the street, with my pitcher
of coffee, I saw a little boy come out from under the tree and speak
to Mr. Chester, who ran over and went into the store.

"I knew that Mr. Chester would not stay long in that place, and so
crept close up to the trunk of the tree, on the shady side, and
holding the coffee under my shawl, to keep it warm, waited for him
to come out. There had been some noise in the store, as if people
were quarrelling, but all that died away, and then two men came out
and stopped by the tree where I was standing. I kept still as a mouse,
and pressed close up to the dark side, for the men were laughing,
and I was afraid they might laugh at me if I came into the light.
I heard every word that they said, sir, but did not know the meaning
of it till now.

"'We have got him at last--Jones saw him take the brandy,' said one.

"'Yes, but he did not drink it; Jones cannot say that.' It was another
voice that made this answer, sir.

"'But he _will_ say that or anything else likely to get this fellow
out of the way--and so must you, and so will I;' answered the loudest
voice again.

"Just then Mr. Chester came out of the store. He looked very pale,
but I thought it was only the moonlight striking on him through the
ice that hung all over the elm tree.

"'Now!' said one of the men, 'now have your foot ready if he comes
this way.'

"Mr. Chester did come that way, sir, walking carefully on the ice.
But for the men I should have gone up to him at once. I did not like
to let them see me, and so waited a little, meaning to follow him
when they were gone, and give him the coffee. He passed close by us
and fell. I heard the men laugh low--_so_ low just as he came up. I
heard them call out, and saw other people come up.

"They lifted him from the ice--these two men--and held his face up
to the cold air. I thought that he was dead, his face shone so white,
and it seemed as if the thought hardened me into ice. I could not
speak nor move. Everything went dark around me. I felt the
coffee-pitcher slip from my hand and break upon the stones, but could
not even try to save it. He had been so kind to me--there was only
one thought come to me through the cold--they would take him home
to his wife, dead. I knew it would break her heart, and still I could
not move. When I did get a little strength, those two men were going
down the street, and Mr. Chester walked between them. I followed
after, but the fright had made me weak, and my eyes were so full of
tears that I could only see them moving before me like people in a
fog.

"Just before I reached the house, two men--the same who had gone home
with Mr. Chester--went by me, walking very fast and laughing. I knew
them by the laugh, for they gave me no time to look up. I hoped by
that to find Mr. Chester not so badly hurt as he seemed. This gave
me strength, and I got home sooner than I should have done. When I
went in Mr. Chester sat by the fire trembling like a leaf, and his
wife stood over him bathing his head, paler than I ever saw her before
or since!"

The little girl paused here, her eyes fell, and the eager look died
on her face, for she saw that cold, sneering smile, peculiar to the
Mayor, drawing down his upper lip--and it struck a chill to her heart.

"Did you see the faces of those men--can you point them out again?"
questioned the Mayor.

"I did not see their faces plain enough to know them again, but by
the voice of that man," and she pointed toward Smith, "I am sure he
was one of them!"

"And this is all you know!" said the Mayor.

"It is all!" was the faint reply. "It is all!" and the child crept
to the side of Chester, and put her hand in his.

He pressed that little hand, looked down kindly upon her, and then
her tears began to flow.

The Mayor arose.

"We have heard the evidence," he said, "and it has been carefully
written down. In a few days, or weeks at farthest, the case shall
be decided--it requires consideration; it requires a patient review
of the evidence. Until the decision, Mr. Chester, you are suspended,
without pay."

The Mayor ended his speech with a gentle bend of the head, and
prepared to withdraw. The clerk rolled up his minutes and the
witnesses went out, anxious to quit a scene that had been more
exciting than they expected.

Chester stood alone in the office, holding little Mary by the hand,
when the Chief came out from his closet, looking very grave, but with
much friendly sympathy in his manner. He wrung Chester's hand, and
uttered a few cheering words. Chester could not speak. His firm lips
began to quiver, and throwing himself upon a chair, he cast his arms
over the railing, his face fell upon them, and the proud, wronged
man sobbed like a child.

What all the coldness and falsehood of his enemies had failed to do,
was accomplished by a few words of unaffected sympathy. These alone
had power to wring tears from his firm manhood, and Chester led his
little protege home with a heavy heart, and a heavy, heavy heart was
that which met his with its wild throb of anguish, as he entered the
home where his wife sat weeping, and watching for him.




CHAPTER IX.

POVERTY, SICKNESS AND DEATH.


  How little would there be of grief or want
    If love and honesty held away on earth!
  The demon poverty, so grim and gaunt,
    But for injustice never need have birth!
  Give room and wages for the poor man's toil,
    And thus the fiend ye weaken and despoil.

During six long weeks did the Mayor of New York keep Chester in
suspense, and all that time the heart-stricken man had no means of
support, save that derived from the labor of his wife. Day and night
that gentle woman sat toiling at her needle, the smile upon her lip
chasing the tear from her eye. Her sympathy was all given to the
husband of her choice. She was grieved and indignant at the wrong
that had been done to him. She was a generous and feminine woman,
but her sense of justice was powerful, and her feelings of
condemnation strong against any man who could violate the bonds of
common equity which should bind neighbor to neighbor.

With that keen intuitive sense that belongs to thoughtful womanhood,
her conviction settled at once on the man from whom her husband had
received his deepest wrong. Great love gave her almost the power of
divination, and with all his craft, the Mayor failed to deceive one
pure-hearted and clear-minded woman. She knew that he was her
husband's enemy, and--blame her not, reader, till you have suffered
similar wrongs--her gentle soul rose up against this man; she could
not think of him without an indignant glow of heart and cheek. She
could not hear his name without a thrill of dislike. She saw her
husband's cheek grow paler each day; she saw his firm step grow weaker
and weaker. In the night-time his hollow cough would start her from
the brief slumber into which she had fallen. Then would the form of
this, his unprovoked and relentless enemy, rise before her mind, and
her soul turned shuddering from the image.

I know that it is a Christian duty to forgive--that when a bad man
smites one defenceless cheek, we are taught to offer the other to
his upraised hand. But the Lord of Heaven and earth promises no
forgiveness of transgression unless it is followed by repentance;
and where God himself draws the strict line between Justice and Mercy,
let no merely human being be censured for withholding forgiveness
to an unrepented wrong. Forgiveness to injuries for which atonement
is offered is a duty, and a sweet one to the noble of heart. But
without repentance--that soul offering of the sinful--let no man hope
to receive from his fellow what Divine Justice withholds. While we
leave vengeance to the Lord, let His great wisdom decide upon the
duties of forgiveness also!

And so with an aching heart Mrs. Chester saw her husband sinking
before her. His spirit remained firm but sorrowful; the shadow lay
upon it; but his body, being the weaker, gave way, and continued
suspense was devouring his strength like a demon. Chester knew that
any day he might be called up before that man, branded with the
drunkard's infamy, and cast forth with a sullied character and broken
health to the mercies of humanity. This thought clung around him night
and day, deepening his cough, hollowing out his eyes, and visibly
bowing down his stately form.

Still Mrs. Chester worked on, and by her side, calm and sweet in her
beautiful gratitude, might always be seen the little Mary, toiling
also, for the mere pittance that supplied the family with food. They
had nothing left for rent--nothing for the thousand little wants that
are constantly arising in a household. These two noble females could
earn food and nothing more; so after a time gaunt poverty came with
the rent-day, and stood before them face to face, darkening the door
with his eternal presence. Then Jane Chester began to tremble--one
by one she gave up to the fiend her little household treasures--her
work-box--her table--every personal trinket, and at last her bed.
The poverty fiend took them all, still crying for more, till she had
nothing to give. Notwithstanding all this, Jane Chester was hopeful;
she would not think that their bright days had wholly departed. Her
husband must be acquitted--he would recover then, and conquer the
disease that anxiety had brought upon him. She said these things again
and again--little Mary listened with tears in her eyes, and Chester
would turn away his head or look upon her with a mournful smile.

At last, when suspense had eaten into his very life, Chester was
summoned before the Mayor. Excitement gave him unnatural strength
that day, and he obeyed the summons, nerved to meet his fate.

His honor received him alone, in the Chief's office. A look of
friendly commiseration was on his face, and he took Chester's hand
with a gentle pressure.

"I have sent for you," he said, relinquishing the burning hand he
had taken, and motioning Chester to be seated--"I have sent for you
as a friend, to advise and counsel you."

Chester bent his head, but did not speak. He sat down, however, for
his limbs trembled with weakness.

"I have put off the decision in your case longer than usual," resumed
the Mayor, playing with a pen that lay on the desk before him,
"because I was in hopes that something might come up to change the
aspect of things. It is a very painful case, Mr. Chester, and I wish
the responsibility rested somewhere else--but the evidence was
conclusive. You heard it all--several persons testified to the same
thing--no facts have appeared since, and as a sworn Magistrate, I
must do my duty."

Chester did not speak, his cheek and lips grew a shade paler than
disease had left them, and he bent his large eyes, glittering with
fever and excitement, full upon the Mayor.

There was something in the glance of those eyes that made the Chief
Magistrate sit uneasily on his leather cushion. He betook himself
to making all kinds of incongruous marks upon a sheet of paper that
lay before him.

"I shall be compelled to break you," resumed his honor. "With the
evidence, I could not answer to my constituents, were I to act
otherwise; but there is a way, and it was for this I sent for
you--there is a way by which the disgrace may be avoided. If you
could make up your mind to resign now, on the score of ill-health,
for instance--you really do look anything but robust--all the disgrace
of expulsion would be got over at once, and I should be saved a very
painful task."

Chester arose, gently and firmly, the blood-red hectic flushed back
to his cheek, and his eyes grew painfully brilliant.

"You can disgrace me, sir; you can ruin me if you choose, I know that
you have the power--that, against the very letter and spirit of our
institutions, the breath of one man is potent to decide upon the fate
of nine hundred of his fellow men--I know that the accused has no
appeal from your decision if you decide unfairly--no redress from
injustice should you be unjust. Knowing all this--knowing that, save
in the magnitude of his power to do wrong, the autocrat of all the
Russias possesses no authority more absolute than the citizens of
New York have given to you, a single man, and a citizen like
themselves--I say, knowing all this, and feeling in my own person
all the injustice and all the peril it brings upon the individual,
I will not, by my own act, give strength or color, for one instant,
to the injustice you meditate. I will not resign--with my last breath
I will protest, fruitlessly as I know, against the cruel fraud that
has been practiced upon me."

The Mayor dropped his pen. For once in his life, the blood did rush
into that immovable face--save around the upper lip, which grew white,
as it contracted beneath the nostril, that began to dilate faintly,
as anger got the master over his colder feelings. He turned his eyes
unsteadily, from object to object, casting only furtive glances at
the face of his victim.

"I have advised you for your own good!" he said at length, "if you
choose to let the law take its course there is nothing more to be
said."

Chester wiped away the heavy drops from his forehead and his upper
lip, where they had gathered like rain.

"You are then decided. You will not be advised!" persisted the Mayor,
after a moment's silence, observing that Chester was about to rise.

"No, I will not resign. Not to save my life would I give this cowardly
recognition of your act. If I am sent from the police, you, sir, must
take the responsibility!"

Chester took up his hat and walking-stick.

"I will wait still longer. You may think better of this?" said the
Mayor, rising also.

Chester turned back, leaning for support upon his walking stick.

"I have given my answer, I am ready to meet my fate!" and without
another word the unhappy man walked forth trembling in every limb,
and girded as it were by a band of iron across the chest.

The Mayor watched him depart with an uneasy glance. He had failed
in his usual game of securing a resignation when the responsibility
threatened to become heavy. In this case the presence of the Chief
of Police at Chester's trial--the character of the man, and above
all his own knowledge of the means by which his ruin had been
procured, rendered the worthy magistrate peculiarly anxious. It was
one of those cases that the public might question, especially when
it became known that the principal witness was to receive the place
made vacant by Chester's ruin. He found most men willing to redeem
some fragment of a lost character by resignation, and thus had
craftily frightened many an honest man from his place whom he would
not have ventured to condemn openly. The Mayor had summoned Chester
to his presence with this hope. But the high and courageous nature
of the policeman, the simplicity, the energy and deep true feeling
inherent in him formed a character entirely above the level of his
honor's comprehension. His craft and subtle policy were completely
thrown away here. Following the noble young man, with hatred in his
eye, the Mayor arose muttering--

"Though it cost me my seat, he shall go!" and he followed the
policeman, calling him by name.

"It needs no longer time for a decision," he said, touching his hat
as he passed out of the City Hall, "to-morrow you can bring your star
and your book to the Chief's office; they will be wanted for another!"

"To-night--I will bring them at once!" said Chester, with a start,
for he was very weak, and the Mayor's voice struck his ear suddenly.
"Then," he murmured to himself, "God help me, to-morrow I may not
have the strength."

When Chester went out in the morning, his wife had complained of
illness, and this added to his depression as he returned home. "Oh,
what news do I bring to make her better," he thought. "What but sorrow
and pain shall I ever have to offer her on this side the grave? Feeble
as a child--disgraced. Oh, Jane, my wife, how will she live through
all that must too surely come upon her!"

Saddened by these thoughts, Chester mounted the stairs. He entered
the chamber formerly the scene of so much innocent happiness, and
found Isabel sitting by the fire alone and crying. Chester loved his
beautiful child, and her tears sent a fresh pang through his heart.
The idea crossed his mind that she might be hungry and crying for
food. He had often thought of late, that this want must come upon
them all at last, but now that it seemed close at hand, it made him
faint as death. He sat down and attempted to lift the little girl
to his knee, but he had not strength to raise her from the floor,
and, abandoning the attempt with a mournful look, he drew her close
to his bosom; his forehead fell upon her shoulder, and he wept like
a child.

Isabel wiped away his tears, and put her arm softly around his neck.
"Oh, papa, don't take on so, I wish I had not cried."

"And what are you grieving about?" said Chester, struggling with
himself, "were--were you hungry, darling?"

"No, it was not that, but mamma, you know, had such a headache, and
we wanted to do something for her, but Mary find I could find no
camphor nor cologne nor anything in the house, and poor mamma kept
growing worse, so we made it up between us, Mary and I, to sell the
Canary bird. There was not a bit of seed, nothing but husks in the
cage, and the poor thing begun to hang its head; so don't blame us,
we had no money for seed, and now that you and mamma are both sick,
Mary thought we had better sell the bird."

Chester groaned, and his face fell once more upon the child's
shoulder.

"Papa, are you angry," said Isabel, while the tears came afresh to
her beautiful eyes.

"No, my child, no. It was right, it was best. But your mother, is
she so very ill?"

"She is asleep now! That was the reason I only cried very softly when
Mary Fuller went away with the bird--Mary made me promise not to cry
out loud, for fear of waking her."

Chester arose and moved softly toward the bedroom. It had a desolate
and poverty-stricken look--that little room--but still was neatly
arranged and tidy in every part. The bureau was gone, and the
straw-bed, though made with care, looked comfortless in comparison
with the couch in which we first saw Isabel.

Mrs. Chester was lying upon the bed sleeping heavily, her cheeks were
crimson, and there was some difficulty in her breathing which seemed
unnatural. Still there did not seem to be cause for apprehension.
Since her troubles came on, the poor wife had often been a sufferer
from nervous headaches, and this seemed but a more violent attack
than usual.

Chester put the hair away from her forehead, and kissing it, softly
went out, thankful that she was not awake to hear his evil news.

He sat down by the window, for it was now early spring, and Isabel
crept to his side. The little creature found in his presence
consolation for the loss of her bird. They had been sitting together
perhaps half an hour, when Mary Fuller came in; her face bore a look
of keen disappointment, and her eyes were full of tears.

"You have told him?" she said, addressing Isabel, "you have told him
about it?"

"Yes, my good little girl, she told me. You were very right to sell
the bird," said Chester, reaching forth his hand.

The child came close to him and looked earnestly in his face.

"You look very bad--you are in pain?" she said, "something is the
matter with you, Mr. Chester."

"I have a little pain here," said Chester, with a sad smile, pressing
one hand upon his breast. "It seems, Mary, as if an iron girdle were
about me, straining tighter and tighter. Sometimes it troubles me
to breathe at all?"

Mary touched his hand, it seemed as if a glowing coal were buried
in the palm. Her eyes filled with strange terror, and without a word
she sat down at Chester's feet, burying her troubled face in her
garments.

"Did--did you sell the bird?" asked Isabel, touching Mary's shoulder.

"Yes," replied Mary, in a smothered voice, "I sold it, but they would
only give me half a dollar. They saw that we wanted money--but I would
not let it go for ever--sometime they will let us buy it back again."

"Oh, that is so much better! When papa gets his place again, we can
have birdy back," said Isabel, relieved from her most pressing grief;
but the hope so innocently expressed struck upon the poor father's
heart like a knife. When he got his place back! That time would never,
never come! He was disgraced--a branded, ruined man. The full
conviction had been cruelly brought home to him by the words of that
hopeful little girl. A smothered groan broke from him. Little Mary
lifted her head, regarding him sadly, as he paced up and down the
floor.

"Mr. Chester," she said, following him, and speaking in a troubled
under-tone, "don't look so sorrowful. I wish you could only cry a
little--just a little, it will do you good; come in and see _her_,
perhaps that will bring the tears."

"It is here, my girl, it is here!" said Chester, laying one hand upon
his chest. "I cannot breathe."

"Perhaps--oh, I am almost sure it is only the tears that cannot get
to your eyes lying heavy there. That does give dreadful pain--I know."

"It is something worse than that," said Chester, and the tears gushed
into his eyes. "I feel--I feel that it is"--

"Is what, sir? oh you may tell me!"

"No, it is nothing, God may yet spare me!"

Mary gazed at him a moment, and then turned away. She entered the
little closet where her bed was, and closing the door, knelt down.
She did not weep as other children of her age might have done, but
clasping her hands, and lifting her meek forehead to Heaven, prayed
in her heart; a little time and the words came gushing to her lips,
earnest, eloquent, and full of deep, simple pathos. Her eyelids
quivered; her mouth grew bright with the soul that troubled it. Her
diminutive frame seemed to dilate and straighten with the energy of
her prayer.

"Oh, God, oh, my Father, who art in Heaven, Thou who hast made these,
Thy children, so good and so beautiful, look down upon me--bend for
one moment from the bright home where Thou hast taken my own father,
and listen to me, his only child--I am feeble, helpless, and all
alone. Oh, God, no one need grieve or shed a tear upon the earth if
I am laid in my little grave before morning. Look upon me, oh, Lord,
see if I am not a useless and unsightly thing, whom Thy creatures
may look upon with pity, but no love save that which bringeth tears.
Take me, oh, Father, take me from the earth, and leave the good man
with his wife and with his child. I am ready, I am willing, this
night, to lie down in the deepest grave, so this, my kind friend,
live for those who love him so much. Father--oh, my own father, who
art nearer unto God than I am, plead for me, plead for him; plead
that thy little unseemly child, may be taken up to the home where
her father is--and that he who saved, and fed, and sheltered thy
child, may be left to feed and shelter his own."

It seemed as if the holy spirit of self-sacrifice that possessed this
child, had sublimated both her language and her countenance. Her face,
so thin, so pallid, beamed with the spirit of an angel--the subdued
pathos of her voice, was like the fall of water-drops upon pure
marble. Long after her lips ceased to move her face and hands were
uplifted to Heaven.

Chester heard the murmur of her voice, and his heart was soothed by
it. He went into his wife's bed-room, and bent gently over her as
she slept. The fever was still hot upon her cheek, and she murmured
in her unrest as Chester took her hand softly in his and pressed his
pale brow upon it. Long and mournfully did the heart-stricken man
gaze upon those loved features. He smoothed the pillow, he spread
the cool linen softly over her arms, he bathed her forehead with cold
water, and afterward with his tears, as he bent down to kiss it before
he went out.

Then he went into the outer room, and took from a drawer his star,
and his official book. These he folded up carefully and placed in
his pocket. Still he lingered in the room, moving from window to
window, and looking sadly upon his child.

"Isabel, I am going out, come and kiss me."

The child came up, cheerful and smiling, with her arms extended.
Chester sat down, and taking her upon his knee, and gathering her
little hands in his, gazed mournfully into her eyes.

"Isabel!" he said, with a degree of solemnity that filled the child
with awe.

She looked up wonderingly; he said no more, but sat gazing upon her.
His bosom heaved with a sort of gasping struggle, sob after sob broke
from his lips, and he removed her gently from his knee. He was turning
to go out when Mary Fuller came from her little bedroom. Chester
turned, laid both hands upon her head, and, as she lifted her gentle
eyes to his, he bent down and kissed her--the first time in his life,
and the last.

With a feeble and slow step, Chester entered the Chief's office, and
rendered up his book and star. He stayed for no conversation, and
only answered the words of sympathy with which he was received by
a faint smile. It was raining when he went forth, and a thick fog
fell low upon the ground. The night was drawing on dark and dreary,
and everything seemed full of gloom. Chester walked on; he took no
heed of the way, but turned corner after corner with reckless haste,
one hand working in his bosom as if he could thus wrest away the pain
that seemed strangling him, and the other grasping his walking-stick
upon which he paused and leaned heavily from time to time.

It was now quite dark, and Chester found himself in one of those murky
streets that lead out among the shipping. The air came in from the
river struggling through a forest of tall masts, and, as it flowed
over his face, Chester drew almost a deep breath, not quite, for a
sharp pain followed the effort--a cough that cut through his lungs
like a knife--and then gushed from his mouth and nostrils a torrent
of blood, frothy, vividly red, that fell upon his hands and garments
in waves of crimson foam.

Chester was standing upon the pier. Beyond him was the water--close
by the tall and silent ships. He cast one wild glance on these
pulseless objects and sat down upon the timbers of the pier, grasping
the head of his walking-stick with both hands and leaning his damp
forehead upon them. Faster and faster gurgled up the vital blood to
his lips. Like wine from the press it gushed, and every fresh wave
bore with it a portion of his life.

Chester thought of his home--his wife, his child--he would die with
them, he would struggle yet with the death fiend and wrest back the
life that should suffice to reach them. He pressed one hand to his
mouth, he staggered to his feet--the staff bent under him to and fro
like a sapling swayed by the wind. He advanced a single step;
faltered, and, reeling back, fell upon the timbers. A sob, a faint
moaning sound, answered only by the dull, heavy surge of the waters
below, as they lapsed against the timbers of the pier. Another moan--a
shudder of all the limbs, and then the fog rolled down upon him like
a winding-sheet.




CHAPTER X

WAKING AND WATCHING.


  Burning with thirst and wild with fever,
    She tossed and moaned on her couch of pain;
  With an aching heart he must go and leave her;
    Never shall they two meet again!
  Never? Oh, yes, where the stars are burning
    O'er his path to Heaven with a golden glow,
  His soul turns back with its human yearning
    To watch her anguish and soothe her woe.

When Mrs. Chester awoke from her slumber, which had been one wild
and harrowing dream, she inquired of the children, who were early
to her bed, if their father had not come back, and if there was yet
no tidings from the Mayor's office. They answered that he had but
just left the house, and that he had been with her nearly an hour
as she slept. She smiled gently, and closing her heavy eyes, turned
her head upon the pillow, moaning with the pain this slight motion
gave.

Mary went to the little supper table which she had spread in
anticipation of Mr. Chester's return, and came back with a bowl of
warm tea in her hand.

"If you can only drink a little of this ma'am," she said, stirring
the tea with a bright silver teaspoon, the last they had left of a
full set, "it always does your head so much good!"

Mrs. Chester rose upon her elbow and attempted to take the tea, but
her head was dizzy, and after the first spoonful she turned away in
disgust.

"I cannot drink it. Oh, for a glass of cold, cold water!"

Mary ran into the next room and came back with some water. But it
tasted tepid to the poor invalid, and she only bathed her parched
mouth with it.

"You are ill, you are very ill, ma'am," said Mary; "this does not
seem like nothing but a slight headache. May I run for a doctor?"

"We have no money to pay doctors with, my child," said the poor
invalid, clasping her hot fingers together, "now that I am sick, who
will earn bread for you all? who will comfort _him_?"

"I will do my best, and so will Isabel!" replied Mary, "besides,
perhaps--"

The child paused and her eyes fell. She was about to say that perhaps
the Mayor might not be so very hard on Mr. Chester, after all; but
remembering the look and manner of that unhappy man, she could not
say this with truth, knowing well, as if it had been told her in
words, that her benefactor had no hope. "Perhaps," she added,
"something may happen. When it was at the worst with me, you know
something happened."

"And surely it is at the worst with us now," murmured Mrs. Chester,
meekly folding her hands, "no, not the worst," she added, with a wild
start, "for I am not a widow yet."

God help the poor woman. She was a widow, even then.

The two children sat up that night watching by the sick, and waiting
for the father to return, who lay so cold and still upon the sodden
timber of that dismal pier. They had eaten nothing all day--at least
Mary had not--and now they cut the sixpenny loaf in slices and partook
of it, leaving a small covered dish, which had been prepared for
Chester, untouched. His supper was sacred to those little girls.
Hungry and worn-out as they were, neither of them even once glanced
at it longingly. They were quite content with the dry bread, and even
ate of that sparingly, for Mrs. Chester had asked for ice, and various
little things in her delirium--she was delirious then--and the
children ran out after everything she mentioned, hoping to relieve
the terrible state she was in, till they had but one shilling left.

So they made a sparing meal of the bread--those poor little
creatures--and a cup of cold water, for the tea must be saved for
him and for her. "Children," they said, with tears in their eyes,
"ought not to want such things."

With all her brave effort to sit up till her father came, poor little
Isabel dropped to sleep with her head upon the table, weary and almost
heartbroken, for she was not used to suffering like Mary Fuller, and
her childish strength yielded more readily. After this, Mary sat
watching quite alone, for Mrs. Chester had muttered herself into a
feverish sleep, and the house was in profound silence.

Then came upon Mary Fuller a terrible sense of the desolation that
had overtaken them. Dark and shadowy thoughts swept over her soul,
leaving it calm, but oh, how unutterably miserable. This foreshadowing
of evil fastened upon her like a conviction. She felt in the very
depths of her being that some solemn event was approaching its
consummation that very moment. She ceased to listen for Chester's
coming, but hushing her tread, as if in the close presence of death,
crept away to a corner and prayed silently.

There are moments in human life when persons linked together in a
series of events may form tableaux, which stand out from ordinary
grouping, like an illustration stamped in strong light and shadow
on the book of destiny. Thus was Chester's household revealed on that
solemn midnight.

Mary Fuller, upon her knees, her small hands uplifted, her face turned
to the wall; Isabel, with her lovely head pillowed on her arms; and,
through an open door, Jane Chester, in her feverish sleep, with the
pale lamplight glimmering over them all--this was one picture.

Another, equally distinct in its mournful outline, was revealed to
the all-seeing One alone.

Upon that dark wharf, among the motionless ships, that seemed like
spectres gazing upon his hushed agony, Chester still lay, shrouded
by the heavy clinging fog. The tide rose slowly lapping the sodden
timbers which formed his death-bed, and creeping upwards, inch by
inch, like the weltering folds of a pall. The whisper of these waters,
black and sluggish, gurgling and creeping toward him, was the last
sound poor Chester ever heard on earth.

Oh, it was a wretched picture that might have won pity from the
ghostlike shrouds and spars which hedged it in as with a forest of
blasted trees.

One more picture, and the night closes. The Common Council was in
session. Both marble wings of the City Hall were brilliantly
illuminated, and crowds of eager spectators gathered around the two
council chambers. Some fifty or sixty poor and efficient men were
to be turned out of office, and the populace were eager to witness
the jocose and delicate way in which the New York city fathers
decapitated their children. To have witnessed the smiling jests that
passed to and fro in the Board, the quiet and sneering pleasure of
one man--the careless tone of another--the indifferent air of a
third--you would have supposed that these wise men had met to perform
some great public benefit. It seemed like a gala night, the majority
were so full of generous glee.

And why should they not be jovial and happy in the legislative halls?
What was there to dampen their spirits in these gay proceedings? True,
the heads of fifty or sixty families were thus playfully deprived
of the means of an honest support. Efficient and experienced men were
taken from almost all the city departments, and cast without
occupation upon the world. Men who had toiled in the city's service,
for years, for a bare livelihood, were suddenly cast forth to want
and penury. It was in the season of a terrible epidemic, and
physicians who had braved pestilence and death, heaped together in
the great hospitals of the city--who had made a home of the
lazar-house, when to breathe its atmosphere was almost to die--were
among those who were to be given up as victims to party.

These men, some of them yet trembling upon the brink of the grave
from pestilence, inhaled while nobly performing duties for which they
were scarcely better paid than the commonest soldier--these were the
men whom our city fathers were so blandly and pleasantly removing
from their field of duty. Was it wonderful, then, that the whole
affair seemed quite like pastime to those engaged in it; or that they
made themselves jocosely eloquent upon the subject, whenever one of
the grave minority ventured to lift his voice against the proceedings?

When the two Boards broke up for recess, nothing could exceed the
spirit and good fellowship with which they went down to supper. The
Mayor was present, for having been an Alderman himself, he always
knew when anything peculiarly agreeable to his taste was coming off
at the hall. The President of the Upper Board was in splendid spirits,
and altogether it was a brilliant scene when the Mayor took his seat
next the President, and the aldermen and assistants ranged themselves
on either side the groaning board.

With what relish the city fathers ate their supper that night! Birds
worth their weight in gold vanished from their plates as if they had
taken wing. Great, luscious oysters, delicately cooked after every
conceivable fashion--canvas-backed ducks, swimming in foreign
jellies--turkeys and roasted chickens, that went from the table whole,
being too common for men who had learned to indulge in wild game and
condiments at the cost of ten thousand a year--decanters, through
which the wine gleamed red and bright, interspersed here and there
with others of a darker tinge and more potent flavor--brandied fruit
and rich sweetmeats, all shed their dull sickening fragrance through
the tea-room. The flash of glasses in the light; the flash of coarse
wit that followed the drained glasses; the clatter of plates; the
noiseless tread of the waiters--why it was enough to make the silver
urn and curious old pitchers start of themselves from the side-board
to claim a share in the feast. It was enough to make the public
documents, prisoned in the surrounding book-cases, shiver and rustle
with an effort to free themselves from bondage.

The very fragments of that official supper would have fed many a poor
family for weeks; but the city fathers really did enjoy it so much
it would have been a pity to dampen their spirits by an idea so at
variance with their action. They had consigned at least fifty
blameless families to poverty that night, and surely that was labor
enough without troubling themselves about the means by which they
were to be kept from perishing.

You could see by the quiet smile upon the Mayor's lip, as he arose
from the supper table, and helped himself to a handful of cigars from
a box on the side-board, that he was in excellent spirits. A
distinguished guest from the country partook of the city's hospitality
that night, and as the two lighted their cigars, they conversed
together on city matters.

"To-morrow--to-morrow," said his honor, "you must go over our
institutions--Bellevue, the Island, and the various Asylums."

The stranger shook his head.

"Not to Bellevue, if that is where your people are dying off so
rapidly of ship-fever," he said. "I have a terror of the disease;
why I saw it stated that half the physicians at your Alms House were
down with it, and that three or four out of the number have died this
season."

"Yes," said the Mayor, lighting a cigar, "the mortality has been very
great at Bellevue, especially among the young doctors. They are
peculiarly exposed, however."

"I should think," said the stranger, laying down his cigar, for he
could not find the heart to smoke quietly, when conversing on a
subject so painful, "I should suppose it would be difficult to find
persons ready to meet almost certain death, as these young men are
sure to do. It must be a painful task to you, sir, when you sign their
appointments. It would seem to me like attaching my name to a death
warrant."

"Yes," replied the Mayor, taking out his cigar and examining the end,
for it did not burn readily; "it is very disagreeable. Why, sir, the
city has paid, already, nearly five hundred dollars for funeral
expenses; and there is no knowing how far it may be carried."

The stranger looked up in surprise; he could not believe that he had
heard aright--that the Mayor of New York was absolutely counting,
as a subject of regret, the funeral cost attending the death of those
brave young men who had perished amid the pestilence, more bravely
a thousand times, than warriors that fall on the battle-field.

But as he was about to speak again, several aldermen who still
lingered at the table, called loudly for the Mayor.

"I say," said the Alderman, who has been particularly presented to
the reader, leaning over the back of his chair, with a glass of wine
in one hand--"I say, have you settled that Chester yet? My man is
getting impatient."

"Hush!" said his honor; "not so loud, my good friend. Bring in the
nomination to-morrow--I gave Chester his quietus this afternoon."

And so he had; for while this scene was going on at the City Hall,
the two pictures we have given, were stamped upon the eternal pages
of the Past, and so was this.




CHAPTER XI.

CHESTER'S HOME IN THE MORNING


  It is dancing--dancing--dancing,
    Oh, the little purplish sprite!
  Now moving, shining, glancing
    Through the mazes of the light.

The grey morning dawned gloomily on Chester's desolated home. Isabel
awoke and looked around with dull and heavy eyes. The beauty of her
young face was clouded by a night of sharp anxiety and broken rest.
Mary sat opposite, leaning with both elbows on the table, and
regarding the poor child with a haggard and sorrowful countenance.

"Has he not come back--oh, Mary, is he not here yet?"

Mary shook her head. "I have been awake all night, every moment. He
has not come!"

"And I--how could I sleep with my poor father away, and mamma so ill?
I did not think that anything could make me sleep at such a time,
Mary!"

"But, you were so tired; oh, I was glad when your head drooped on
the table; it looked so pitiful to see you growing paler and paler,
while she kept muttering to herself. I was glad that you could sleep
at all, Isabel."

"I feel now as if I should never sleep again," replied the child,
looking at the covered plate where her father's supper had been
standing all night. "He will never come back, Mary Fuller, I feel
sure of it now!"

Mary did not answer--she only covered her eyes with one hand and sat
still.

Isabel arose, took the covered plate in both her hands and placed
it in the cupboard, weeping bitterly. This act showed even plainer
than her words that she really did not expect to see her father again.
She crept back to Mary, and, leaning upon her shoulder, began to cry
with low and suppressed passion. Poor thing, it is a hard lesson when
childhood first learns to curb its natural grief.

"What shall we do, Mary?" whispered the poor child, burying her wet
face upon Mary's shoulder that received its burden unshrinkingly;
"oh, what can we do?"

"Isabel," said Mary, solemnly, "what should we do if--if your father
should be dead?"

"He is dead--or very, very sick--I am sure of that; what else could
keep him from home, and mamma calling for him so pitifully? Mary,
I am sure that he is dead; we shall never, never see him again!" and,
with a burst of terrible grief, the poor child flung her arms around
Mary Fuller, and sunk to the floor, almost dragging the little girl
with her. "Mary, he is dead--he is dead!"

"Who is dead--who is dead, I say? Why do you crowd the room with those
little dancing creatures, all in loose clothes--scarlet, gold, purple,
green--why do you not send them away?" cried the voice of Mrs.
Chester, and there was a rustling of the bed-clothes, as if she were
trying to cast them from her.

The children held their breath, and cowered close together. Again
Mrs. Chester spoke:

"Leave the children, leave them; I did not tell you to drive the
children away; Chester, Chester, they are taking our children off;
Isabel--Mary Fuller, come back!"

"I am here--no one shall take me away," said Mary Fuller, bending
over the bed; "Isabel, too, is close by your pillow--she has been
crying to see you so sick; do not mind her eyes, they will grow bright
again when you are well!"

Mrs. Chester started up in the bed. A moment of consciousness seemed
to come over her. She looked at Mary and at Isabel, and spoke to them
in a whisper, leaning half out of bed--

"Girls, where is he? tell me now, Mary, that's a good little
girl--what have they done with him?"

The children looked at each other, and Isabel began to sob.

"How long is it since I went to sleep? He was here, you know!" said
the invalid.

"Only a little while!" answered Mary, quickly. "You have not slept
long."

"Oh! I thought--but then people will dream such things--I say, just
tell me--come, will he be back soon--can't you tell me that, little
folks?"

"Lie down, there, now take a glass of ice-water, and I will go after
him," said Mary, exerting all her little strength to persuade the
invalid back to her pillow.

"Ice, ice! give me a whole handful--no water, but clear cold ice!"

They gave it to her; in her burning hands and her parched mouth they
placed the crystal coldness; and it slaked the burning fever. It
melted in her hand, dripping in soft rain down her arms and over her
bosom, where the hand lay clenched tightly upon its cool treasure.
With her white teeth she crushed the diamond fragments in her mouth,
and laughed to feel the drops flowing down her throat.

"Now, Mary, little Mary Fuller, go and tell him that I am wide awake,
and waiting for him! Go now, while the ice is plenty, he shall have
a share."

"I will go!" said Mary, and drawing Isabel from the room, she told
her to stay close by her mother, and let her have anything she wanted.
While giving these directions she put on her hood and shawl.

"I will find him; I will not come back without news; but, oh! Isabel,
I have little hope of anything but news that will kill her, and almost
kill us; I would not say this, but it has been in 

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