“Willie, that’s my man, sir,” continued the girl, “is right glad to get away. Last Candlemas his mother died, and left Willie her savings, and that, and what we have, will tide us to America, and Willie he says that he can get a home, and have a little land, and Willie will be better of his sickness. He’s not here the day, because of his cough and the fever that he has. Ah! sir, it makes me chill at my heart to see him, and to think that we are going so far,” and the sweet face looked piteously at Leacraft, and the tears overran the sad gray eyes. Leacraft saw it all; a consumptive father, poor, out of work, staking everything now to reach that bourne, where the hopeless of all nations saw the welcome light of opportunity. As he thought of this he saw how great this avulsion was, what a tearing up of the roots of family and home life, and how ruthlessly they were to be planted in all sorts of soils, under alien skies, with inauspicious hands to tend and raise them. He turned to the young mother, and said, “It won’t seem so far, if a face from the old home greets you there. I shall be there also, and I will not only be glad to see you, but glad to help you, if you need it. Take this,” and opening his card case, he wrote an address in New York city. “If,” he continued, “you do not remain in New York, this will always find me. Good bye.” He extended his hand and shook with unaffected warmth the hand of the young English woman, to whom the future loomed up in misty and insecure, perhaps menacing shadows. How merciful is sympathy, with what a solacing hand it soothes the “ruffled brow of care,” and how genially it bids the springs of life still follow, and, for a moment at least, flow too in the sunlight of affection. The English woman seized Leacraft’s hand and pressed it tightly, and her face looked into his with almost an enamored thankfulness; she raised the baby girl and held it close to Leacraft, and the restrained Englishman kissed it with quaint shyness. At the instant, all the shifting helplessness about him moved him inexpressibly. Again they shook hands and the Englishman betrayed into emotional excess, walked rapidly away, reassuring her at the last that he would indeed be soon in America.