'Dear love,' he said, all the tenderness of his nature going out in his words, 'God wills it so.' 'I know, I know, my love,' she answered, her tears still flowing. 'How can I fill up the void in her life?' he thought, and gave expression to his thought. Then she reproached herself, and asked his forgiveness, and cried, in remorse, 'How could she, how could she grieve him with her sorrow?' 'I have a right to it,' he answered. 'It is not all yours, my dear. Promise me, you in whom all my life's cares and joys are bound, never to conceal another of your griefs from me.' She promised, and was somewhat comforted. This was within a couple of months of Christmas. A few nights before Christmas, as he was walking home, having been detained later than usual at his office, he came upon a throng of people talking eagerly with one another, and crowding round something that was hidden from his sight. It was bitterly cold, and the snow lay deep. He knew that nothing of less import than a human cause could have drawn that concourse together, and could have kept them bound together on such a night, and while the snow was falling heavily. He pushed his way through the crowd to the front, and saw a policeman gazing stupidly upon two forms lying on the ground. One was a man--dead; the other a baby--alive in the dead man's arms. He had them--the living and the dead--conveyed to the station-house; inquiries were set afoot; an inquest was held. Nothing was learnt of the man; no one knew anything of him; no one remembered having ever seen him before; and the mystery of his life was sealed by his death. He told his wife the sad story, and kept her informed of the progress, or rather the non-progress, of the inquiry. The man was buried, and was forgotten by all but the Silvers. Only one person attended the parish funeral as mourner, and that was Mr. Silver, who was urged to the act by a feeling of humanity. 'The poor baby? said Mrs. Silver, when he came from the funeral--'what will become of it?' In the middle of the night she told her husband that she had dreamt of the baby. 'It stretched out its little arms to me.' Her husband made no reply; but a few nights afterwards, having arranged with the parish authorities, he brought home the child, and placed it in his wife's arms. Her heart warmed to it immediately. A new delight took possession of her; the maternal instinct, though not fully satisfied, was brought into play. During the evening she said, 'How many helpless orphans are there round about us, and we are childless!' And then again, looking up tenderly from the babe in her lap to her husband's face, 'Perhaps this is the reason why God has given us no children.' [Illustration]