If a particle of Ned Evans’ old spirit had been left, this taunt of getting his daughter a situation would have roused it. But his life was crushed. He was hopelessly besotted and exhausted, though now he had decent clothes, for which he had sacrificed the last remnant of decent feeling he possessed. These clothes belonged to the keeper of the vilest Hell in New York; and Ned was his “decoy-duck,” and did any job the fellow set him about. He was as craven before his cousin as possible. He had one instinct of his nature left—he wanted to provide for his child. “I will be here at the time, so help me God,” said he—and he kept his word. It was the last right act of his life. As if to make his cousin out a prophet, he rode Eclipse, and broke his neck in earnest, though not in “_sober_ earnest.” When Charles Evans heard of it, he only said, “One poor devil less in the world;” but he murmured to himself, as he turned away, “Poor Cousin Ned!” CHAPTER III. “Send the little girl to my room to-night, aunty, when you have made her decent. I must see what she is fit for, and what she looks like. Remember, she is to have good warm clothes, but no gewgawry.” At 8 o’clock precisely, Marie came into Mr. Evans’s room with a waiter, on which was spread the most frugal sort of a supper. Rye bread and butter and black tea, it was his sovereign pleasure to be served with at night. Mrs. Evans had had time only to extemporise an amelioration in the girl’s dress. She was at that very awkward age when a girl is not a child or a woman. She had a heavy burden of deep-red hair, and all her bones showed through their scant covering of flesh—and they seemed hung on wires, and very loosely hung, too. Her eyes were a very deep blue, but she had been somewhat “cross-eyed” from infancy, and now the defect was much aggravated by her constant weeping. She was very timid, shrinking from every one. What had she ever found in her lot to assure her or give her confidence?