Another girl made her appearance; a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth; all here upon one errand--to claim the scanty sum for which they had worked, almost from dawn to dawn. They spoke to each other, questioningly: they looked into each other’s eyes with dread apprehension, and they conversed in low excited tones. The wages they had come to receive had been earned with a death-sweat. It was to them of vital consequence. One or two had homes and parents upon whom to fall back for assistance; but the loss of the money to the others left them only a choice between the streets and the river. Lotte grasped at a railing near her for support. A throng of sharp ringing sounds rushed through her brain. She took no part in the conversation. She could not have uttered a sound, her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth, her throat swelled and contracted as though it would stifle her. She began to lose her perception of what was going on around her. Everything seemed to be absorbed in a harrowing consciousness that her beggary, her loneliness, and desolation had assumed proportions of more terrible magnitude than they had ever yet done--that they surpassed her power to endure them longer. She had a dim impression that a person residing next door told them all that their employer had fled with his goods ere daybreak, no one knew whither. Sickened, heart-broken, Lotte quitted her hold of the railing which had sustained her, and staggered away. It was not difficult to find her way to the black and murky river, careering swiftly and noiselessly through the heart of the vast metropolis down to the sea. “The river! the river!” Those were the only words she muttered. These words of such terrible significance seemed to be shrieked by demons in her ears She saw them in fiery characters dancing _ignis-fatuus_ like, before her, leading her on to her doom. She followed unresistingly. How she found her way--what route she chose to the river-side--she knew not, cared not. She reached a bridge that spanned the dark waters, ere she was conscious of her proximity to that grave which could be self-made by one desperate plunge. And now the fearful act she contemplated presented itself in its most awful guise before her despairing eyes, but not to deter her from her frantic purpose. No! If she remained on earth, her future was all black and unshapen. There was rest and immunity from the horrors of want and destitution in the grave. She knelt down and prayed. She compressed her hands tightly together; a wild hysteric groan, forced from her by the intense anguish created by her unutterable thoughts, burst from her lips, and she hurried on to the bridge, to end, by one fearful plunge, her sorrows and her young life. As she swept on to a recess, blinded by her misery, maddened by a despair devoid of one glimmering of hope, the glare from one of the lamps fell upon her ghastly face.