occurred which fanned all her scruples and reluctances into life again. The child suddenly jerked away his hand and, placing it behind him in the clutch of the other, said to her respectfully but resolutely, while he planted himself at a considerable distance: “I don’t like this place.” “Neither do I like it, my darling,” cried the dressmaker pitifully. “Oh, if you knew how little!” “Then we’ll go away. I won’t go in.” She would have embraced this proposition with alacrity if it had not become very vivid to her while she stood there, in the midst of her shrinking, that behind those sullen walls the mother who bore him was even then counting the minutes. She was alive in that huge dark tomb, and Miss Pynsent could feel that they had already entered into relation with her. They were near her and she was aware; in a few minutes she would taste the cup of the only mercy (except the reprieve from hanging) she had known since her fall. A few, a very few minutes would do it, and it seemed to our pilgrim that if she should fail of her charity now the watches of the night in Lomax Place would be haunted with remorse—perhaps even with something worse. There was something inside that waited and listened, something that would burst, with an awful sound, a shriek or a curse, were she to lead the boy away. She looked into his pale face, perfectly conscious it would be vain for her to take the tone of command; besides, that would have seemed to her shocking. She had another inspiration, and she said to him in a manner in which she had had occasion to speak before: “The reason why we’ve come is only to be kind. If we’re kind we shan’t mind its being disagreeable.” “Why should we be so kind if she’s a bad woman?” Hyacinth demanded. “She must be very low; I don’t want to know her.” “Hush, hush,” groaned poor Amanda, edging toward him with clasped hands. “She’s not bad now; it has all been washed away—it has been expiated.” “What’s ‘expiated’?” asked the child while she almost kneeled down in the dust to catch him to her bosom. “It’s when you’ve suffered terribly—suffered so much that it has made you good again.” “Has _she_ suffered very much?” “For years and years. And now she’s dying. It proves she’s very good now—that she should want to see us.” “Do you mean because _we_ are good?” Hyacinth went on, probing the matter in a way that made his companion quiver and gazing away from her, very seriously, across the river, at the dreary waste of Battersea. “We shall be good if we’re compassionate, if we make an effort,” said the dressmaker, seeming to look up at him rather than down. “But if she’s dying? I don’t want to see any one die.” Miss Pynsent was bewildered, but her desperation helped. “If we go to her perhaps she won’t. Maybe we shall save her.”