r us to come up in? If God is what they say, He
ought to strike the people dead that keep Him to themselves till it is
too late for us ever to be helped. There! I won't talk about it. I don't
care: all I want is quiet, an' I'll have it soon.'

"I saw there was no use then, an' I made up my mind. I'd seen this Mrs.
Simpson, for Nan had told me when it all happened, an' I'd gone to the
store on purpose; an' I went straight there. 'I've come from Nan,' I
said, 'but she doesn't know it. She's a dyin' girl, an' as you helped
the father I want you to help the daughter. You're a Christian woman,
an' the only soul belongin' to her, an' the time's come to do
something.'

"'The father was decent,' she said: 'I've nothing to do with
street-women.'

"'It's through your own son that she grew up to know no better,' I said,
for I knew the whole story then, though nobody did when she was down
there. 'It's for you to give her your hand now, an' not throw it up to
her, any more'n the Lord when he said, "Go, and sin no more." She's in
trouble an' sick, and doesn't know what way to turn, an' sore-hearted;
an' if you would go to her in the right way you might save a soul, for
then she'd believe people meant what they said.'

"'She's the same to me as dead,' she said. 'I mourned her sharp enough,
but it ain't in nature to take one again after they've been thought
dead; an' you know they're straight from corruption itself. There's
places for her to go if she's tired of wickedness, but I don't want to
see her bold face, an' her head high, as if she was respectable. An' I
don't want to be plagued no more. I don't deny I lotted on her before
she was took away, but I never want to think about her again; so you
needn't come nor send. I've said my say, an' I hope the Lord will save
her.'

"'It's good He's more merciful than His creatures,' I said; an' I went
away more angry than I ever want to get. I couldn't quite make it out--I
can't to this day--how she could mourn so over the child, an' yet never
have a thought for all the years she'd had to suffer.

"There came a month that everything crowded. I thought of Nan, but
couldn't go up, till one day Tom Owens came in--you know him--an' he
said, 'It's all up with Charley Calkins.'

"'How?' I said.

"'Smallpox,' he said, 'an' Nan's dropped everything to nurse him. She'd
left there, they said, an' the woman he brought in to take her place
cut the minute she found he had the smallpox. He won't