were; but this much I did gather, that the aunt’s means, as well as the fortune of the family, had been squandered by the husband of the younger woman. So many gently-born come down into our slums, and compete with the poorest of the poor for a bare and miserable existence; but they mix not with the coarse and the lewd that abound around them; they seek no help, and never flaunt their poverty. Silently and in obscurity they go down to their doom of starvation. Sometimes they will come to the court and gasp their sorrow out to the magistrate, but not often, unless, indeed, it is some man or woman brought low by their vices. In such self-respect is dead, and they are ever ready to trade upon their past affluence, and are by no means ashamed to beg; but those who have been brought low by the wrong-doing of others present a pathetic spectacle. I have before me now an old letter which came to me at the police court. It reads as follows: ‘DEAR SIR, ‘For God’s sake, come and see us! This is a forlorn hope.’ As it gave the name and address of the writer, I went, and again it was Christmas Eve. The snow lay deep on the ground, and a hard frost had bound it together; the fog was choking and almost impenetrable, when about seven in the evening I found myself knocking at the door of the house. There was no light in the passage, but someone--I could not see who--answered the door. I inquired for Miss G----, and the voice said: ‘Downstairs.’ The door closed, the owner of the voice went away, and I was left in complete darkness. I struck a match, and by the aid of its feeble light found the ramshackle staircase that led below. I groped for a door, found one, and again knocked, and it was opened. A middle-aged woman with an old shawl round her head stood before me, a small benzoline lamp in her hand. Her face was so swollen that her features would not have been recognised even by friends. I told her my errand, and she asked me in and gave me a chair. It was an uncanny place. The fog penetrated the room, and the small, smoky lamp scarcely relieved the gloom. I had not been seated a moment before I was aware that there was something or somebody alive in one corner of the room, for a difficult and almost choking breathing was very audible. Beyond asking me in, the woman in the shawl had not spoken, so, lifting the little lamp from the table, I went to the corner, and very soon found a pair of eyes gazing into mine. The eyes and the breathing belonged to another woman, who lay on a miserable bed in the corner. She was evidently near death, and could not speak to me, so I found my way to the chair. ‘Who is she?’ I asked quietly of the woman in the shawl. ‘My sister.’ ‘She is very ill?’ I said. ‘She is dying,’ was the reply. ‘Have you had the doctor?’ ‘Yes; the parish doctor has just gone away, and he says she won’t last till morning.’ ‘Why did you write to me?’