shoes with the high heels, they were like sponges upon her feet,
and she slipping in them as she stumbled along through mud and gutter to
her ankles.

But she kept going on! The baby lay warm and snug upon her heart. She
managed to keep him sheltered, anyway! Now and then she'd stop and put
her face down to his, to feel his sweet warm breath upon her cheek. Then
she'd go on again. That ass-cart! If only she could catch it! Wouldn't
it be Heaven to be taken off her aching feet and be carried along,
herself and the child, with some one that knew the way, and not to be
feeling lost, as she did now.

For by degrees that's what Delia had to think; she was lost. Still she
struggled on, the poor little bet-down thing that she was; so tired that
she only kept moving at all by clenching her teeth hard and saying out
loud, "I must! I must! A nice thing it would be for Art to not find me
when he gets home! I must keep going on! The baby would die if I was to
lie down..." for that is what she was more inclined for than anything
else.

The wind was coming in great gusts now, hindering her far worse than the
rain. It caught her skirts like the sails of a ship; it snatched at her
hat. She tried to hold it on, but a sudden strong blast came, just as
she was shifting the child again in her arms. Like a spiteful hand, it
tore the hat from her head and furled it away; and what could be done,
to get it again, in the storm and darkness? Delia cried at first,
thinking of the loss it was. But she minded nothing long, only the
tiredness and that still she must keep going on.

Suddenly she began to sing to the child:

I laid my love in a cradley-bed,
_Lu lu lu lu la lay_.
Little white love with a soft round head,
_Lu lu lu lu la lay_.

Before she had it done, she thought to see a light a piece off from her.
She made towards it. Out upon the bog itself she was now; and them that
saw her tracks after, said one of the holy Angels must have been guiding
her then, that she wasn't drownded, herself and the child, in a
bog-hole. She slipped here and she fell there on the wet, rough ground;
but she kept on till she reached the light. It was the Christmas Candle,
in Michael's stable, burning there, mild and watchful.

CHAPTER IV

THE CRIB

While all this was going on, Big Michael was sitting, snug and
comfortable, in the chimney-corner, opposite