slip that was too short to cover the rosy dimpled feet; and smoothed
the flossy tendrils of yellow hair crumpled around the lovely face.

The Sister of Charity, who, in the darkest hours of the pestilence had
shrouded the poor young mother, did not forget the human waif astray in
the world; but having secured a home for it in an "asylum," to which
she promised it should be removed so soon as all danger of carrying
contagion was over, had appointed the ensuing Monday on which to bear
it away from the gloomy precincts, where sinless life had dawned in
disgrace and degradation. This pretty toy, dowered with an immortal
soul, stained by an inherited criminal strain, had appealed to the
feminine tenderness in Beryl's nature, and she stood a moment, lost in
admiration of the rounded curves and dainty coloring.

"Poor little blossom. Nobody's baby! A lily bud adrift on a dead sea of
sin. Dovie--Eve Werneth's child--but you will always be to me Dulce, my
pretty clinging Dulce, my velvet-eyed cherub model."

Turning away, she bathed her face and hands, and leaned for a while
against the southern window; listening to the exultant song of a red
bird hovering near his brooding brown mate, to the soothing murmur of
the distant falls, borne in on the wings of the thievish June breeze
that had rifled some far-off garden of the aroma of honeysuckle. The
current of air had swung the door back, leaving only a hand's breadth
of open space, and while she sang to the baby, her own voice had
drowned the sound of footsteps in the corridor.

On the whitewashed wall of the cell, a sheet of drawing paper had been
tacked, and taking her crayons, Beryl returned to the cradle, changed
the position of the child's left hand, and approaching the almost
completed sketch on the wall, retouched the outline of the sleeping
figure. Now and then she paused in her work, to look down at the golden
lashes sweeping the slumber-flushed cheeks, and pondering the mystery
of the waif's future, she chanted in a rich contralto voice, the solemn
"Reproaches" of Gounod's "Redemption."

"Oh, my vineyard, come tell me why thy grapes are bitter? What have I
done, my People? Wherein hast thou been wronged?"

For weeks the elaboration of this sketch had employed every moment
which was not demanded for the execution of her allotted daily task in
the convict workroom; and knowing that on Monday she would be bereft of
her pretty model, she had redoubled her exertions to