"Oh, let us go with her--pray take us!" cried Mary Fuller, who was anxiously watching the man, while Isabel bent over the wharf, her hands hanging down, and her eyes full of helpless woe. The pauper captain neither heeded the pleading cry of Mary Fuller, or the more touching look of the orphan--and to all the humane arguments of Crofts he turned a deaf ear. At length Crofts found a means of persuasion more potent than tears or words. He took from his pocket four twists of coarse tobacco, which the captain received with a grin. Hiding the treasure under his seat, he cast a sharp glance over the pile of coffins to assure himself that the transfer had not been observed by the men in the bow. "Holloa, there, stop crying and jump in if you want to go!" cried the man, addressing the children; "make room in the bow, will you--we have got to leave these children at the nurseries as we come back." Crofts lifted the little girls into the boat, sat them gently down in the shadow of Mrs. Chester's coffin, and went back to the hospital. "Give way, all hands!" cried the captain, seizing the helm. "Pull a strong oar, boys, or the tide will turn agin us!" Half a dozen oars splashed into the water as this command was given. The boat moved slowly from the wharf, and wheeling through a narrow inlet, shot heavily out with its freight of death, into the East River. Oh, what a change was there, from the dull and murky gloom of Bellevue! Down upon the broad expanse of waters came the morning sunshine. Rosy and golden it fell upon the waves, as they tossed and rolled and dimpled to the soft spring breeze. Here a current of liquid gold went eddying in and out, like the trail of a comet; there, lay the smooth, calm surface, rosy with the young light, or blackened by the shadow of an overhanging bank. Behind them lay New York city, Brooklyn, and Williamsburg, the tall masts and steeples rising through a sea of hazy gold, and belted with the silvery flash of the river. The banks, on either side, were clothed with soft, vivid green, broken with dog-wood trees in full flower, and maples in the first sweet crimson of their foliage. The fragrance from these banks swept down upon the water and trembled through the air. All this seemed like the very atmosphere of paradise to those little girls, after their dreary sojourn in the pestilential gloom of Bellevue. They could not realize that the mother, the benefactress, whose smile had been so sweet only a few days before, was really and truly gone. She was there close by; their little hands could touch her coffin; the scent of flowers stealing through its chinks, constantly reminded them of the mournful truth; but, with everything so bright and lovely around, they could not believe in the reality. The motion of the boat--the melodious dip of the oars in the water--these things were new and strange. There was nothing like death in it all save the heap of coffins, and from them they shrank shuddering and appalled.