She went with swift gliding step, like that of a red Indian, into the library. Richard was piecing the broken cords of a great old folio--the more easily that they were double--in order to re-attach the loosened sheets and the hanging board, and so get the book ready for a new cover. She carried in her hand something yet more sorely in need of mending--a pigeon with a broken wing, which she had seen lying in the park, and had dismounted to take. It kept opening and shutting its eyes, and she knew that nothing could be done for it; but the mute appeal of the dying thing had gone to her heart, and she wanted sympathy, whether for it or for herself she could hardly have distinguished. How she came to wake a little more just then, I cannot tell, but the fact is a joint in her history. The jar to the pigeon's life affected her as a catastrophe. She felt that there a crisis had come: a living conscious thing could do nothing for its own life, and lay helpless. Say rather--seemed so to lie. Oh, surely it is in reason that not a sparrow should fall to the ground without the Father! To whom but the father of the children that bemoan its fate, should the children carry his sparrow? But Barbara was carrying her pigeon where was no help for the heart of either. “Ah, poor thing,” said Richard, “I fear we can do nothing for it! But it will be at rest soon! It is fast going.” “Ah! but where?” said Barbara, to whom that moment came the question for the first time. “Nowhere,” answered Richard. “How can that be? If I were going, I should be going somewhere! I couldn't go nowhere if I tried ever so. I don't like you to say it is going nowhere! Poor little thing! I won't let you go nowhere!” “Well!” returned Richard, a little bewildered, “what would you have me say? You know what I mean! It is going not to be, that is all.” “That is all! How would _you_ like to be told you were going nowhere--going not to be--that was all?” Richard saw that to declare abruptly his belief that he was himself as much going nowhere as any pigeon that ever died, would probably be to close the door between them. At the same time, if he left her to imagine that he expected life for himself, but not for the animals, she must think him selfish! Unwilling therefore to answer, he took refuge in his genuine sympathy with suffering. “Is it not strange,” he said, and would have taken from her hands the wounded bird, but she would not part with it, “that men should take pleasure in killing--especially a creature like that, so full of innocent content? It seems to me the greatest pity to stop such a life!”