“There, take the brat!” she said, with an unnatural laugh. “I meant that you should nurse it all the time, if you hadn’t teased one’s life out about it.” Mary Margaret did not answer; her limbs were trembling like aspens, and she sunk upon the cot overpowered with fatigue. Drawing the little stranger softly to her bosom, she pressed it gently there, felt the thrill of its eager lips, and drawing a deep breath of satisfaction, watched its great eyes turned upon her own, till, as if struck by the same mesmeric influence, the woman and the infant slumbered together. It was a sweet picture of helplessness and charity, a noble proof that no human being can find a place so humble upon this earth, that some good to others may not be wrought out of it. As the woman and children lay thus, buried in that gentle sleep which sometimes falls like dew after a good action, the lifeless young creature was lifted from her pauper death-bed, and carried forth to be stretched in the still more poverty-stricken pine coffin. Then the marble form of the infant was carelessly carried after, and that bereaved mother followed it with her wild, bright eyes, and laughed as the door closed. CHAPTER III. THE HOSPITAL NURSE. Late in the evening, the hospital nurse, who had been an evil actor in the scene we have just described, stood, with a smoking lamp in her hand, in a closet or store-room where the patient’s garments were kept. From one of the shelves she took a bundle tied up in a coarse woollen shawl, and drew forth a long merino cloak that had evidently found its origin in old Ireland. She folded the cloak cautiously around her, and selecting a bonnet from a score or two that filled a side press, she tied a green veil closely over it. Then she extinguished her lamp, finding her way out by the glow of its smouldering wick, and leaving a cloud of offensive smoke to deepen the already unpleasant atmosphere of the room. The woman had evidently intended to disguise herself, and she stole like a thief down the dark passages of the building, avoiding the officers and keeping close to the shadow whenever she came within the range of a light, like one who feared to be seen. At last she came out into the grounds in front of the hospital. The moon was up, but hidden occasionally by masses of clouds that cumbered the sky with a darkness that threatened snow. The woman waited under the shadow of the steps till a heap of these clouds had completely obscured the moon, and then darted out, taking a central walk that led from the principal entrance to Bellevue down to the water. A grape-arbor, at the time of our story, ran half-way down this walk, covering it, even in winter, with a thousand gnarled and twisted vines, that kept, the light away and afforded the obscurity of which she seemed so desirous.