"Mother," said Jack, "have you not often told me that God will not forsake us? Does it not seem as if He _had_ forsaken us now?" "It only seems like it, darling," returned the widow hurriedly. "We don't understand His ways. `Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him!'" It seemed as if God were about to test the faith of His servant, for at that moment a cab drove furiously round the corner of a street and knocked her down. Jack was overturned at the same time. Recovering himself, instantly, he found his mother in a state of unconsciousness, with blood flowing from a deep cut in her forehead. In a state of semi-bewilderment the poor boy followed the stretcher, on which Mrs Matterby was carried to the nearest hospital, where he waited while his mother's injuries were examined. "My boy," said a young surgeon, returning to the waiting room, and patting Jack's head, "your mother has been rather badly hurt. We must keep her here to look after her. I daresay we shall soon make her well. Meanwhile you had better run home, and tell your father--if, that is-- your father is at home, I suppose?" "No, sir; father's dead." "Well then your sister or aunt--I suppose there's some relative at home older than yourself?" "No, sir; none but mother an' me," whispered Jack. "No relations of any kind at all in London?" "None, sir. We know nobody--at least not many, and they're all strangers." "A sad case," murmured the surgeon. "Your mother is poor, I suppose?" "_Very_ poor, sir." "But of course you have a home of some sort, somewhere?" "Yes, it's not far from here." "Well, them, you'd better go home just now, for you can't see your mother to-night. We dare not let her speak, but come back early to-morrow, and you shall hear about her--perhaps see her. Here, put that in your pocket." Poor Jack took the shilling which the sympathetic surgeon thrust into his hand, and ran home in a state bordering on distraction; but it was not till he entered the shabby little room which he had begun to consider "home" that he realised the full weight of the calamity that had befallen him. No mother's voice to welcome him; no bit of fire in the grate to warm; no singing kettle to cheer, or light of candle to dispel the gloom of rapidly approaching night. It was Christmas Day too. In the morning he had gone forth with his mother--she in the sanguine hope of renewing an engagement in a clothier's shop, which terminated that day; he in the expectation of getting a few jobs of some sort--messages to run or horses to hold. Such were the circumstances to which they had been reduced in twelve months, Jack had arranged to call for his mother and walk home with her. On the way they were to invest a _very_ small part of the widow's earnings in "something nice" for their Christmas supper, and spend the evening together, chatting about the old home in Blackby, and father, and Natty Grove, and Nellie, and old Nell, in the happy days gone by.