“I don’t know where to find her friends, if she has any, poor child!” she said, huskily. “My Jem picked her up, out o’ the fire, and brought her here; nobody’s been to ax after her; and we don’t know where to go. She’s never been in her senses since she was here, else I should have got her to tell me; but, lawk! lawk! it is a sad thing for a poor girl like this to die away from home, and ne’er a friend or relation to close her poor dear eyes. I’m a mother myself, sir! an’ God knows, I should be dreadful wretched if one of my babbies was to die away from me in this lonesome way.” The poor woman sobbed unaffectedly as she concluded. The doctor, with a glittering tear in the corner of his eye, laid his hand gently upon her shoulder-- “While there is life there is hope, Mrs. Bantom,” he said, kindly. “It is too early to despair yet. Had the young woman nothing about her when your husband saved her?--no letter?” “Lord bless you, nothing on but those night things you see on her; not a blessed rag else. My Jem has been a trying if he could learn anything about her, but lor! he goes about such matters in sech a bladderheaded sort o’ way, that I don’t wonder at his making a bad out on it. He lurches and prowls about when he goes to ax for his own in sech a way that people are afear’d on him. It was only the other day he went for a little bill, which it was a long time a owin’ an’ we wanted the money badly--when he explained what he’d come for in sech an in and out round about sort a way that the people sent for a policeman believin’ he’d come on the sneak to prig the ’ats and mats in the ’all.” The doctor could hardly forbear a smile. He turned his eyes, however, on Lotte’s face, and bent his head down closely to listen to her breathing, he felt her pulse, timing its rapid beats by his watch; then he laid down the unresisting hand, and addressed himself to Mrs. Ban tom. “Poor thing!” he said, “she is very, very ill. If she wakes shortly, give to her a dose of the medicine I have brought with me--she must have it, especially if she be violent, incoherent, and resists your attempts to administer it. Should it not have the effect of pacifying her, send for me at once. Good night, Mrs. Bantom. Pray to God to spare her, for she is on the threshold of death,” he concluded, with much solemnity in his tone. He made his way out of the room. She lighted him down the stairs, and when she heard the street-door close she returned to the sick room to watch by the side of her friendless patient.