The sound of this response, which came from the half famished creatures like the croak of so many hungry ravens, brought tears to the sick woman’s eyes, for these dumb sufferers had been her companions so long, that all the sympathies of which she was capable went out from her own forlorn state to theirs. But these humanizing feelings were all driven away when Peg, the ungrateful cat, stole out from under her bed with a fragment of food in her jaws, which she carried to the fireless and unswept hearth, and devoured under the fierce, hungry gaze of her mistress, with the sly look and crouching air of an ungrateful thief as she was. The old woman was feeble from long illness, but nothing could quite overcome the bitter malice of her nature, and the sight of her prime favorite caring for her own wants with cool selfishness, as if she had been human, quenched her tears in anger. She gathered herself up in the squalid bed, and shook her clenched hand fiercely at the feline reprobate, who, as if comprehending all the impotency of this rage, answered it with a greenish glare of the eyes, and a low, muffled growl over the food she was devouring. As the old woman fell back upon her pillow, shedding tears of imbecile rage, a knock came to the door, for the first time in many days. The cat listened a moment with her paws fastened greedily on the fragment of food, and her ears thrown back. The chickens drew in their lank necks and huddled together in the back of their little coop; and the old woman cried out piteously, and yet with a tremor of rage in her voice,—“Come in, whoever you are. Welcome, in the name of the blessed Virgin!” The door opened, and a woman entered the room firmly, and with the demeanor of one who had a right there. Her dress was very humble, and made after a fashion that had prevailed years before. A large bonnet of pink silk, now faded and crushed, was on her head; a fall of discolored blonde lace, once very costly, half shaded her features; and a mantilla of antique voluminousness fell over a dress of soiled calico. “Who are you? and what do you come for?” inquired Madame De Marke, striving to support herself on one elbow in the bed, while she shaded her eyes with the other hand. “Has anybody heard that I was sick? Why didn’t they send me a Sister of Mercy?” “I am all the sister of mercy you’ll be likely to get to take care of you in this world or the next,” replied her visitor, looking around the room with a smile of grim satisfaction. “All right! So you are sick and want help—hungry and want food. I like that. It goes a good way toward convincing me that there is a just God, and I don’t like to give up that idea altogether, though he did make such creatures as you are.” The old woman uttered a sort of hiss, and clenched the hand she had lost all strength to threaten with.