It was the cry of her babes that waked her from slumber. The fire was slowly dying; the sun was looking down coldly from the leaden sky; slowly his beams were obscured by dark, sullen masses of vapor, which at last curtained the whole heavens. Rain! When she sat watching in the darkness, a few hours before, she thought nothing could make her condition worse. But an impending rain-storm which, thirty-six hours before, would have been hailed as merciful and saving, would now only aggravate their situation. Darker and darker grew the sky. She must hasten for food ere the clouds should burst. Her limbs were stiff with cold, her sight was dim, and her brain reeled as she rose to her feet and tottered to the grove to search for sustenance to keep her wailing babes alive. Her own desire for food was gone, but all exhausted as she was she could not resist the pleadings of the loved ones who hung upon her garments and begged for food. Gleaning a few more coarse morsels on the ground so often searched, she tottered back to the spot which still seemed home though naught of home was there. Strange, racking pains wrung her wasted body, and sinking down beside her children she felt as if her last hour had come. Yes! she would perish there beside those consecrated ashes with her little ones around her. A drizzling rain was falling faster and faster. The fire was dying and she pushed the brands together, and gathered her trembling babes about her knees, and between the periods of her agony told them not to forget their mamma nor how they had lost her; she gave the eldest boy many tender messages to carry to her husband and to her first born. With wondering and tearful face he promised to do as she desired, but begged her to tell him where she would be when his father came and whether his little brother would go with her and leave him all alone. The rain poured down mercilessly and chilly blew the blast. The embers hissed and blackened and shed no more warmth on the suffering group. Keener and heavier grew the mother's pangs, and there beside the smoking ruins of her home, prone on the drenched soil, with the pitiless sky bending above her, her helpless children wailing around her writhing form, the hapless woman gave birth to a little babe, whose eyes were never opened to the desolation of its natal home.