hin wasted hand was laid on his
burly arm, in its velveteen sleeve; and what a weak faint voice in
trembling accents, urged its sad, wistful prayer.

"Speak to me, Jim--won't you speak to me, dear? I've looked for you
day and night, and followed you mile after mile till I'm ready to lie
down and die here on the cold stones."

"Bother!" replied Jim, shaking himself free. "I'm busy, I tell ye.
What call had you, I should like to know, to be tracking, and hunting
of me about, as if I was a--well--a fancy dog we'll say, as had
strayed out of a parlour? Go home, I tell ye, or it'll be the worse
for ye!"

"You don't love me no more, Jim!" said the woman. There was a calm
sadness in her voice speaking of that resignation which is but the
apathy of despair.

"Well--I don't. There!" replied Jim, acceding to this proposition with
great promptitude.

"But you can't keep me off of loving _you_, Jim," she replied, with a
wild stare; "nobody can't keep me off of that. Won't ye think better
of it, old man? Give us one chance more, that's a good chap. It's for
dear life I'm askin'!"

She had wound both hands round his arm, and was hanging to it with all
her weight. How light a burden it seemed, to which those limp rags
clung so shabbily, compared with the substantial frame he remembered
in former days, when Dorothea was honest, hard-working, and happy.

"It ain't o' no use tryin' on of these here games," said he,
unclasping the poor weak hands with brutal force. "Come! I can't stop
all day. Shut up, I tell ye! you'll wish you had by and by."

"O! Jim," she pleaded. "Is it come to this? Never say it, dear. If you
and me is to part in anger now we'll not meet again. Leastways, not
on this earth. And if it's true, as I was taught at Sunday-school,
heaven's too good a place for us!"

"Go to h----ll!" exclaimed the ruffian furiously; and he flung her from
him with a force that would have brought her to the ground had she not
caught at the street railings for support.

She moaned and sat down on a doorstep a few paces off, without looking
up.

For a moment Jim's heart smote him, and he thought to turn back, but
in his maddened brain there rose a vision of the pale, haughty face,
the queenly bearing, the commanding gestures that bade him kneel to
worship, and with another oath--remorseless, pitiless, untouched, and
unrepentant--he passed on to his iniquity.

Dorothea sat with head bent down, and hands clasped about her knees,