It was probably an hour or so later, when Mr. Blenkinsop was awakened by the barking of the dog Christmas. He quieted the dog and listened. He heard a sound like that of a baby crying. It awoke tender memories in the mind of Hiram Blenkinsop. One very sweet recollection was about all that the barren, bitter years of his young manhood had given him worth having. It was the recollection of a little child which had come to his home in the first year of his married life. "She lived eighteen months and three days and four hours," he used to say, in speaking of her, with a tender note in his voice. Almost twenty years, she had been lying in the old graveyard near the ash tree. Since then the voice of a child crying always halted his steps. It is probable that, in her short life, the neglected, pathetic child Pearl--that having been her name--had protested much against a plentiful lack of comfort and sympathy. So Mr. Blenkinsop's agitation at the sound of a baby crying somewhere near him, in the darkness of the old graveyard, was quite natural and will be readily understood. He rose on his elbow and listened. Again he heard that small, appealing voice. "By thunder! Christmas," he whispered. "If that ain't like Pearl when she was a little, teeny, weeny thing no bigger'n a pint o' beer! Say it is, sir, sure as sin!" He scrambled to his feet, suddenly, for now, also, he could distinctly hear the voice of a woman crying. He groped his way in the direction from which the sound came and soon discovered the woman. She was kneeling on a grave with a child in her arms. Her grief touched the heart of the man. "Who be you?" he asked. "I'm cold, and my baby is sick, and I have no friends," she sobbed. "Yes, ye have!" said Hiram Blenkinsop. "I don't care who ye be. I'm yer friend and don't ye fergit it." There was a reassuring note in the voice of Hiram Blenkinsop. Its gentleness had in it a quiver of sympathy. She felt it and gave to him--an unknown, invisible man, with just a quiver of sympathy in his voice--her confidence. If ever any one was in need of sympathy, she was at that moment. She felt that she must speak out to some one. So keenly she felt the impulse that she had been speaking to the stars and the cold gravestones. Here at last was a human being with a quiver of sympathy in his voice. "I thought I would come home, but when I got here I was afraid," the girl moaned. "I wish I could die." "No, ye don't neither!" said Hiram Blenkinsop. "Sometimes, I've thought that I hadn't no friends an' wanted to die, but I was just foolin' myself. To be sure, I ain't had no baby on my hands but I've had somethin' just as worrisome, I guess. Folks like you an' me has got friends a-plenty if we'll only give 'em a chance. I've found that out. You let me take that baby an' come with me. I know where you'll git the glad hand. You just come right along with me."