The moonlight, as it stole in through the windows, revealing the range of cots with the pale forms upon them in fitful gleams, made him think but the more yearningly of home. Everything was cold, purely clean, yet full of desolation to the child. He dared not cry; the stillness and expanse of the room—vast compared to Dillon’s cabin—held him in awe. Vague ideas of something strange that was to happen, made his eyes gleam out large and wildly in the moonlight. There he lay, that poor, wakeful child, holding his breath, and swallowing his sobs in vague terror of the very life with which he was surrounded. Then the stillness was broken by rattling sounds in the wall, and the patter of tiny feet along the floor. The rats, which haunt all public buildings impudently, as if they possessed an elective right to municipal plunder, were out on a midnight revel in the ceiling, and commenced chasing each other across the spotless floor. Poor little Eddie heard the sound with a thrill of terror. His limbs shook, a low cry broke from his lips, and creeping forward he clung, shivering, to the other little child, more fortunate in its power to sleep, that lay in the same cot. But, no, the child was used to these noises and would not awake. With those trembling arms clinging to him in wild terror, and those brown curls, damp with tears, falling over his face, the child slept on, leaving the poor stranger more desolately alone from his slumbering presence. He had become used to the vastness and the midnight noises, and could not feel the baby-heart fluttering like a wounded bird against his side. And this night was a type of many that the boy spent in his new home. He would not be comforted; his eyes were always heavy or filled with pitiful tears; his little heart pined with a tender, yearning hunger for the friends who seemed hundreds of miles away. Grief was tenacious with him. His cheeks grew white as snow; there was always a troubled quiver on his baby-lips if any one spoke to him; but the noise of his sorrow was stilled, and so those who had charge said kindly to one another,— “Poor thing, it is the homesickness; he will soon get over it.” But weeks passed, and Eddie did not get over his homesickness. He grew pale and quiet, but that sensitive baby-heart was desolate as ever. Visitors were, in those days, only admitted to the children once a month, consequently Mary Margaret did not see her child during these weeks of anguish. One day, when the little creature was becoming dreamily passive, a strange gentleman and lady entered the baby’s nursery as they passed over the institution. They were both young and of singularly aristocratic appearance. Certainly there was nothing in the lady that reminded you of Mary Margaret Dillon, but the heart sometimes finds strange likenesses. When Eddie looked up, the lady’s back was toward him. She was about the size of his nurse; this must have been all, but it was enough.