The girl looked up faintly and put out her hand. "Pray," she said in a whisper--"pray for the mother;" but even as she spoke she gasped, half rose, then fell back, and was gone, the look of entreaty still in the eyes. The doctor closed them gently, the poor eyes that would never need to beg for help any more, and then the mother, still silent, came softly and touched the girl's face, sinking down then by the side of the bed and stroking the dead hands as if to bring back life. The man had risen too and came slowly to her side. "I thank God she iss gone away from all trouble," he said, "but oh, my doctor, it iss so hard!" "Hard!" the woman echoed and rose. "I will not hear of God: I hate God. There iss no God, but only a deffil, who does all he vill. Brita iss gone, and Lars and little Jan. Now it must be de oders, and den I know vat you call God vill laugh. He vill say, 'Ah, now I haf dem all. De fool fader and de fool moder, dey may live.'" "Brita! poor Brita!" the man said softly, and added some words in his own tongue. She pushed him away, then burst into wild weeping and sank down on the floor. "He will be her best comforter," the doctor said. "We will go now, and I will see them all to-morrow. That money will get the coffin," she added as she laid a bill on the table and then went softly out, "but the coffin would not have been needed if help could have come three months ago." "I thought it was some drunken home," I said, "but that man can never have gone very far wrong. He has a noble head." "No, it is only hard times," she answered. "Go again, and you will learn the whole story, unless you choose to hear it from me." "No," I said as we stood under the shelter of the still unfinished Franklin Square Station on the elevated road, "I will hear it for myself if I can." The time came sooner than I thought. A month later I went up the dark stairs, whose treacherous places I had learned to know, and found the room empty of all signs of occupation, though the bed and table still stood there. "They're gone," a voice called from below. "They've come into luck, Pat says, but I don't know. Anyhow, they turned out o' here yesterday, an' left the things there for whoever 'd be wantin' 'em." "Bad 'cess to the furriner!" said another voice as I passed down. "Comin' here wid his set-up ways, an' schornin' a bit of dhrink!" "An' if ye'd take patthern of him yerself--" the woman's voice began, and was silenced by a push back into her room and the loud slam of the door. "They have come to better times surely," the janitor said as I asked their whereabouts at the mission, "an' here's their new number. It's a quiet, decent place, an' he'll have a better soon."