She crept toward the sea, and hugged the wall when she heard approaching footsteps. She need not have feared; the night was too inclement for any but selfish considerations. The soft snow fell, and enwrapt her and her child in its pitiless shroud. She paused by a lamp post, and cast an upward look at the heavens, in which she could see the glimmering of the stars. Then she went on, and pressed her babe close to her breast to stifle its feeble sobs. "Be still, be still," she murmured. "There is no hope in life for either of us. Better dead--better dead!" CHAPTER VI. THE FRIEND IN NEED. Desperately resolved as she was to carry her fatal design into execution, she had not reckoned with nature. Weakened by the life of privation she had led for so many months, and also by the birth of her child, her physical forces had reached the limit of human endurance. She faltered and staggered, the ground slipped from beneath her weary feet. Vain was the struggle; her vital power was spent. From her overcharged heart a voiceless and terrible prayer went up to heaven. "Give me strength, O God, give me but a little strength! I have not far to go!" She fought the air with her disengaged hand, and tossed her head this way and that, but her ruthless prayer was not answered, and though she struggled fiercely she managed to crawl only a few more steps. She had yet hundreds of yards to go to reach the sea when some chord within her seemed to snap; her farther progress was instantly arrested, and she found herself incapable of moving backward or forward. Swaying to and fro, the earth, the sky, the whirling snow, and the dim light of the stars swam in her sight and faded from before her. In that supreme moment she saw a spiritual vision of her dishonored life.