The man scowled upon her from beneath the broken brim of a slouched hat, and in a low fiendish growl, cursed her. His clothes had been respectable in their time, but now were tattered and slovenly, and his face wore the savage wildness and vacancy of long-continued dissipation. "I came home to ask you for money, so give me what you've got, and let me go, for I haven't done drinking yet," said he, while the devil-like glare of his eyes seemed to pierce the poor mother to the soul. "I spent my last penny to buy my child some food, I know not where to get another; you have never wanted a meal while I could work, and my poor fingers are wasted to the bone by midnight labor and the want of bread, and my poor child is wasting away before my face, while you, forgetting all the ties that bind a father to his offspring, or a husband to his wife, take the very bread from me and my babe, to waste it in drunkenness; oh, Charles, you loved me once, but you are killing me now, and my poor dear child." "You howling, canting hypocrite, give me some money and let me go," bawled the intoxicated brute, and with a sweep of his hand, as he sat upon the child's bed, he overturned the table and scattered the miserable meal upon the floor. The heart-broken wife rushed with her babe to the opposite end of the room, and cowered down in fear. "Do you hear, or do you want me to murder you?" and he rose from where he sat and reeled toward her; shrinking and shivering as she bent over her babe, she pressed its almost lifeless body to her heart, and when he stood above her, she looked up in his face in the agony of despair, and implored, in the mute utterance of her tear-worn eyes, for mercy. But he did not strike her, although she was indeed well used to that, but he put out his hand and taking from her bosom a locket, which had been a dear sister's gift, and the last thing left her but her babe and death, staggered to the door, and, after looking back with a menacing and brutal expression of his savage features, left her. Although he was gone she moved not, but sat wailing like a dove whose nest has been bereft of that which made life dear, and sobbing loudly in her grief she looked upon her child, and saw the tokens of pain and want upon its meagre face, and could feel the throbbing of its little heart becoming more and more feeble, from hour to hour, as the shadow of its life was waning.