As soon as he was able to walk he set out on foot from the mining camp. He was accompanied half a day’s journey by a couple of his companions, who brought him as far as a friendly Indian’s hut and there bade him good-by, leaving him to rest for the afternoon and spend the night, while they retraced their steps to the mining camp. Early the next morning The O’Melaghlin resumed his journey and dragged himself by slow stages of ten or fifteen miles a day, stopping at night in miner’s, hunter’s or Indian’s hut, according as either offered shelter near the close of evening. And so at length he reached the city late one autumn night, and went straight to the hotel where he had left his young wife. There he learned that she had been dead and buried for more than a month past, and that the twins to which she had given birth were in the care of the professional nurse, Mrs. Mandy Mally, of Cyprus Lane. But he scarcely heard this last item of intelligence. The shock of the first fatal news, coming as it did after the wasting of his long illness and the weariness of his long tramp, quite overwhelmed The O’Melaghlin. He fell senseless to the floor. He was taken up and sent to the casual ward of a public hospital, where he suffered a severe relapse that confined him to his bed for many weeks. Upon his second recovery, as soon as he was discharged from the hospital he went in search of the monthly nurse who had taken charge of poor Moira’s babes. He found the woman in a very small house in a very narrow back street. She looked scared when she was confronted with the father of the children whom she had sent away. But she soon recovered her self-control. She told him how she had disposed of the children, and excused herself by calling his attention to the poverty of herself, her house and her surroundings, and to the necessity of her going out to work. The O’Melaghlin accepted all her apologies. He did not blame her in the least. He thought it best for the children to be under the care of the Sisterhood of the Holy Maternity; and he told her so. He left the nurse, and went out to find some cheap lodgings where he could hide himself and his misery for a few days until he should be able to come to some understanding with himself and strike out some plan for the future. He wished to go and see his children at the asylum, and yet he dreaded the trial; he could not get up resolution to do so. They had been the cause—though the innocent one—of their mother’s death, and so he shrank from looking upon their infant faces. Besides, the pride of The O’Melaghlin winced at the thought of going and facing the Sisters of that house and owning himself the father of those destitute infants, without either taking them away at once or making some provision for their support in the institution; and he could neither take charge of them himself nor provide for them anywhere. He was at this time too bitterly poor.