I stopped the mail-boy again to-day, for news of the Marrs family. "Things is going mighty bad," he said. "The babe is pindling scandlous, and its paw is wore to a frazzle tending it of nights, and cooking, and troubling in his mind. Minervy Saxby allows if Blant don't git back to that 'ere babe, it'll purely pine to death." Nucky came out as we talked, and heard the boy's account. He said to me immediately, "I want to go home Friday." "You are not strong enough for the walk," I said. "I've got to go," he declared. _Saturday Night._ Nucky went home yesterday; and shortly after noon to-day I was surprised to see him ride down the road in front of the cottage, with a small bundle held on one arm. I called to him in surprise, and he halted. "It's the babe,--I brung it to see Blant," he said. He unwrapped the blanket from the baby's head, and the poor little creature looked down at me with such big, sad eyes out of a tiny white face, that my heart was wrung within me. I went on down to the jail with them. The keeper ushered us into the large room where Blant sat with the other prisoners (most of them nice boys, in only for moonshining, or for celebrating Christmas too enthusiastically); but he sat in a corner alone, while they played cards around a table. Nucky went toward Blant with his bundle. "'Pears like the babe will pine to death for you, Blant," he said, "so I brung her over." He opened the blanket, and with one ecstatic cry out of utmost depths of suffering, the little creature sprang forward, and buried her head in Blant's bosom. Blant held her close, laid his head upon hers, and burst into a terrible storm of weeping, a storm that swept everything, and all of us, before it. Nucky and I wept together, the keeper stood with tears streaming down his cheeks, the card-playing boys, noisy and careless a moment before, to a man laid their heads on the table and wept. I am sure that before that tempest of emotion was over, it must have washed from Blant's heart some of its awful burden. I slipped out and ran to the hospital for a nursing bottle and some milk, that Blant might feed the poor little starving babe. Oh how bright, how joyous, how pitiable, was the smile upon her tiny, pinched face as she laid aside her bottle repeatedly to assure herself by touch and sight that Blant still held her. Late in the afternoon, when I begged to keep the babe during the night, Blant shook his head, and clasped her more strongly to his heart. _Sunday Night._ When Nucky and I stopped at the jail after church to-day, the keeper told us Blant had sat up all night with the babe in his arms. "'Peared like he couldn't part with her a' instant," he said; "I allow if anything can splice him on to life again, it will be her." This raised my hopes. I saw now that Nucky had brought her for a double reason. "May she stay here with him a while?" I asked.