But how was all this? How had Elsie Ford come out from this fiery furnace so beautiful, so pleasant to look upon? It troubled her poor brain to make it all out. Ah! now she had it once more: Elsie had not been into the valley and shadow of death. It was herself only, the evil growth cast off by the beautiful one, who had been so full of trouble. He had not killed Elsie, only herself; not even that. Death would have been very pleasant at his hands; that was perhaps why he had let her suffer so much, but not die. Poor Elsie! Some gleams of reason were struggling through all this wild talk, and this confusion of thoughts, and every ray of consciousness was a pang. She turned from the picture at length, shaking her head wearily, as if the struggle for memory had worn her out. Then her eyes fell upon the other portrait, the handsome, bright-looking man who had left so strange an impression upon Catharine. Her eyes grew larger; her lips parted, and with a long, breathless gaze she sunk slowly to the floor, like a snow-wreath touched by the sun. Catharine arose and bent over the prostrate woman. “Elsie, dear Elsie, speak to me!” There was a movement of the white drapery, and a low moan. “They are together; they two together yet, and I, oh, me—oh, me!” She did not lift her head again, but went trembling and drooping from the library, moaning all the way. CHAPTER XLI. NURSES FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR. I must go back a year or two, and take up an event, which happened during Catharine’s sojourn in the Insane Asylum. An old man, gray-haired, and with a most bland countenance, cordial and ruddy, lighted by those soft chestnut-brown eyes that are always so pleasant of expression, sat behind his desk in the Almshouse building at the Park. It was visiting-day in his department, when all the orphan infants, put out to nurse by the city, were expected to be brought to the office for inspection, or for such changes as time made necessary. It was a strange scene, at times painfully revolting, and again full of natural pathos. One after another, these poor little pauper souls were brought in, wrapped in an old shawl or torn blanket, motherless, or worse than motherless,—their very existence the growth of sin, or of misfortunes almost as bitter. The women who carried them were usually but one degree removed from the Almshouse themselves, and became the paid mothers of these miserable children, in order to save their own offspring from the same terrible fate.