The last straw had broken the camel’s back. Christian charity—while it relieved the undeserving, while it had feasted the reprobate—had passed by her, because, poor as she was, she was a real woman with all a woman’s self-respect and sensitiveness to shame, not a drunken, dissipated wretch of brazen face and fluent tongue. Her heart was broken already, and she fell an easy prey to the cold as it stiffened her withered limbs and stopped her poor heart’s action and dried up the feeble current of her blood. Again the coroner came to Parker’s Piece, and an intelligent jury returned a verdict of ‘Death from the visitation of God.’ Dear reader, you and I know better; she was murdered, and a day will come when some one will have to suffer for that deed—murdered she was, as surely as if her throat had been cut by the assassin’s knife. There are thousands in this land of churches and chapels and abounding charities who die in this way every year, and someone, statesman, or parson, or philanthropist, or master, or neighbour, is to blame. As regards each of us, it is as well that we pray with David, ‘Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God of my salvation.’ It is only as we realize the spirit of that prayer that we can save the perishing. That is the remedy, and not the dream of the Utopian, or the Socialist, or the mad result of anarchy and crime. CHAPTER II. THE ACTRESS AND THE WAIF. A lady—a genius, beautiful in face, well formed in person, one of Nature’s nobility if of doubtful pedigree—had been giving a Shakespearian reading or recitation, it matters not which, to a highly respectable audience in a highly respectable county town. The leading county families had, as they were bound to do, put in an appearance on the occasion. Wealthy manufacturers, who did not much care about that sort of thing themselves, had sent their women-folk, always delighted to show that they could dress as well, and look as grand, as the wives and daughters of men whose ancestors had fought at Agincourt or at the Battle of Hastings. Bevies of sweet girl graduates, from the neighbouring female academies, had come to listen and admire; while a few of the superior class of tradesmen and local magnates had kindly condescended to patronize the star that had suddenly appeared in their midst, and whose portrait for some weeks previous had ornamented their walls and shop windows—in the case of the latter by means of photographs, while big lithographs were available for posters. The audience were deeply affected, some with the loveliness of the actress, others, a more select and elderly party, with her dramatic power. According to local journals, the actress was greeted with an ovation as she resumed her seat. All eyes were turned on her as she retired from the scene of her triumphs, fevered with excitement, wearied with her physical exertion, flushed with the applause she had honestly won, her brain still reeking with