With a sadder heart than ever did poor Henry grope his way up into the cold garret that night, with but one thought and one image in his mind, the thought of home and the image of his mother. He dreamed of her all night. He was at home. Her tender voice was in his ear, and his head rested on her bosom. She clothed him in warmer garments, and set him beside her at the table, upon which was tempting food. But morning came at last, and he was awakened from visions of delight to a more painful consciousness of his miserable condition by the sharp, chiding voice of his cruel mistress. Slowly, with stiffened limbs and a reluctant heart did he arise, and enter upon the repulsive and hard duties of another day. As he had not been permitted to go home, his next consolatory thought was that his mother would come out at once to see him. This hope he clung to day after day, but he clung to it in vain. It mattered not that, every-time the shop-door opened when he was in it, he turned with a quickened pulse to see if it were not his mother, or that he would pause and listen, when back in the house, to hear if the strange voice that came suddenly from the shop, were not the voice of her he so longed to see. She came not; nor was any word from her brought to him. And thus passed the whole of the severe month of January, the long and cold winter adding greatly to his other causes of suffering. CHAPTER VIII. HENRY GASTON'S TREATMENT BY SHARP. A BOY of more robust constitution and fuller of blood than Henry Gaston, with that activity which a fine flow of animal spirits and a high degree of health give, would have cared little for the exposure to which he was subjected at Sharp's, even if clad no more comfortably. But Henry had little of that healthy warmth natural to the young. He was constitutionally delicate, and this caused him to feel more keenly the chilling intensity of the cold to which he was frequently exposed without sufficient clothing. His whole dress, intended to protect him from the cold of a remarkably severe and trying winter, was a thin shirt, the remains of one worn for nearly a year; the jacket and trowsers, thin and threadbare, that Mrs. Sharp had made for him out of some worn-out garment which her husband had thrown aside, and which were now rent in many places; a pair of dilapidated yarn stockings, with feet like a honey-comb. His shoes, the pair given him by his mother, had been half-soled once, but were again so far gone that his stockings protruded in several places, and yet neither his master nor mistress seemed to take any notice of their condition, and he was afraid to ask for a new pair. When it rained or snowed, or, worse, when it rained with or after the snow, as it had done several times within a week, his shoe were but a poor protection for his feet. The snow and water went through them as through a sieve.