'Where have you been?' she said; 'we got so frightened. Why are you so late? Oh, dearie me!' as she caught sight of his face. 'You 're ill! Something has happened! There, come in, doee, now; you look fit to drop!' He pushed by her almost roughly into the house, and dropped down wearily into the arm-chair. He was too worn out and exhausted to notice anything, even the warmth and comfort of the bright fire and the supper ready on the table. He tossed his soaked hat on the ground, and leaning his elbows on his knees and his head on his hands, sat bowed down with the feeling of utter wretchedness. Day after day, night after night, till his life's end, plenty and comfort and neatness and respectability and warmth in dull monotony; while outside somewhere in the cold and rain, in poverty and want and wretchedness, wandered Edith with the wailing baby in her arms. 'You can go to bed,' he said to Jane Sands; 'I don't want any supper.' She drew back and went softly out of the room, but some one else was standing there, looking down at the bowed white head with eyes fuller even of pity and tears than Jane's had been; and then she, too, left the room, and with a raised finger to Jane, who was waiting in the passage, she went up-stairs and, as if the way were well known to her, to the little room which had been got ready so uselessly for the organist's daughter. There, sheltered by the bed-curtain, was the cot where Zoe was to have lain, and there, wonderful to relate, a child's dark head might be seen, deep in the soft pillow, deeper in soft sleep. And then this strangely presuming intruder in the organist's house softly took up the sleeping child, and wrapping a shawl round it, carried it, still sleeping, downstairs, the dark lashes resting on the round cheek flushed with sleep and of a fairer tint than gypsy Zoe's, and the rosy mouth half-open. The organist still sat with his head in his hands, and did not stir as she entered, not even when she came and knelt down on the hearth in front of him. Jane Sands was unusually tiresome to-night, he thought; why could she not leave him alone? And then against his cold hands clasped over his face was laid something soft and warm and tender, surely a little child's hand! and a voice (a voice he had never thought to hear again till maybe it sounded as his accuser before the throne of grace) said: 'Father, for Zoe's sake.' THE END. Edinburgh; Printed by W & R. Chambers, Limited. FOR YOUNGER BOYS AND GIRLS 1s. net.-