became feverish, restless, and incapable of guiding herself aright. Before, however, this terror came to add to her sufferings, she used to toil cheerfully--her boy, lying perhaps on a pillow at her feet, crowing and laughing in her gentle face. Then he was so like his father--the same large brown eyes, and shading lashes, which tempered so much their fire--it was all Miles's face, but with her own light hair, in glossy curls, with a rich, sunny glow on the cheek; and with all the love she lavished on him, the little voice was seldom raised in tears, only laughter--laughter, which convulsed the bright face, as he hung, shrieking with it, round the fair mother's neck. We have said that, even in her wretchedness, Minnie had learned that there were others more so, in outward seeming. In the garret adjoining her own, she frequently heard, as the hours of the night crept on, and she was sitting up completing some work, a quiet, heavy step plodding up and down the room, in evident thought or pain. Often had she listened to this sad neighbour; and his sorrows and loneliness seemed to add to her own. A laugh beside her might have cheered; but this lonely watching wore on her already chastened heart. She asked the _concièrge_ one day if she knew who it was. "A poor old Frenchman," she replied; "very poor, I think, and all alone--but he seems proud in his necessity. And then, madame, you know I cannot do much for any one--I am not rich; and he never gives me an opportunity of speaking. He pays regularly; but I think, poor old man, that his means of existence are very small." This decided kind-hearted Minnie. "We are never so poor," she said to herself, "but what we can assist one another, even if only by a kind word to lighten life's weary load. I will try and speak to this poor man." Where a woman resolves upon doing a good action, she generally succeeds in some way. There was something about her, in her voice and manner, which at once inspired confidence and affection in the worthy; and when this pretty, delicate creature, with her little boy in her arms, tapped gently one evening at the next door, and asked for a light, if he had one, of the thin tenant, who was almost bent double by age, and still more, sorrow and poverty, the man's cold face brightened as he answered, while the poor lips trembled with cold, and possibly hunger, "My child, I have none; I am going--going out." Alas, poor creature! he was going out in the bitterer cold, thinly clad, to endeavour to circulate the nearly frozen blood, before returning to creep into a half-covered bed, and there strive to practise the French proverb of "_qui dort dîne_," for he was dinnerless. There was something in the accent not strictly Gallic, though he spoke French. "Don't go out to-night, _mon voisin_," she said smiling; "it is wet and cold; you are alone, so am I save for _mon enfant_. Do you like children?"