The location of the Catholic chapel was soon examined, the priest's house communicating with it. In neat straw bonnets trimmed with white, and plain muslin dresses, Adelaide and Hester assisted at the daily mass. In the priest they recognized at once the Abbé Martigni, and in the noble-featured youth who knelt by his side Adelaide traced the likeness, now first becoming dear to her, of her late husband. A day or two elapsed ere she could summon courage to call at the house. At length the moment arrived for the looked-for visit; the sisters had, however, scarcely gained entrance to the outer court, when their attention was attracted by loud sobs from a little boy and girl, who stood weeping as if their hearts would break. The abbé was speaking to the woman with whom they came; he then turned to the children, and patting them on the heads, said tenderly: "I will come directly, my poor children." He turned hastily away without receiving his visitors. Adelaide took the boy's hand kindly. "What is the matter?" she asked. The boy could not speak for weeping, but the woman answered: "His mother, my lady, poor Biddy, shure, she has fallen from her seat, on to the stone pavement, while she was cleaning the windows of a large house in Queen street, and they say she must die." Adelaide whispered, "take me to your mother;" the boy looked at the woman; "aye," said she, "do you and Sissy go home with the ladies, I will wait to show his reverence the way." Led by Adelaide and Hester, the girl and boy threaded back the way to their wretched home, and entered it some time before the priest arrived. In one of those dreary places of large cities called a "blind alley"--where the houses nearly meet in the upper stories, and where the sunshine of heaven is excluded; surrounded by bad smells, and the very atmosphere of which makes us shrink and shudder as we enter the damp and dirty houses, the inhabitants of which are for the most part very dirty also--here in a cellar, darker even than its neighbors, lay a poor widow with four children weeping around her. The woman was barely sensible; her brain and spine were injured; the doctor had said she could not live till night; two women, neighbors, were with her trying "to get sense out of her," as they said. It was the first time the sisters had ever witnessed such a scene. The very walls were covered with dirt; the floor was partly brick, and where these were broken away, the foot slipped into holes of the bare earth; the windows were so covered with dust and cobwebs it was difficult to find out what they were made of. {36} On a low pallet, on a dirty straw-bed, with no blankets, no sheets, naught save one dirty coverlet, lay a figure with long, dark, lank hair, almost covering her face and person. Adelaide approached, but the woman heeded her not; her large dark eyes were set: she moaned from time to time, but spoke not. "Where do you feel pain?" kindly inquired the lady. "Oh I bless you,