nt, frail child of thirteen.
Here had his vision taken form, growing more definite with the growth
of his granddaughter, seeming to become at length a splendid reality.
What talk had been held here between Kirkwood and himself whilst Jane
listened! All gone into silence; gone, too, the hope it had encouraged.

He was weary after the morning's absence from home, and fell into a
light slumber. Dreams troubled him. First he found himself in
Australia; he heard again the sudden news of his son's death; the shook
awoke him. Another dozing fit, and he was a young man with a wife and
children to support; haunted with the fear of coming to want; harsh,
unreasonable in his exactions at home. Something like a large black
coffin came into his dream, and in dread of it he again returned to
consciousness.

All night he had been thinking of the dark story of long ago--his
wife's form motionless on the bed--the bottle which told him what had
happened. Why must that memory revive to trouble his last days? Part of
his zeal for the great project had come of a feeling that he might thus
in some degree repair his former ill-doing; Jane would be a providence
to many hapless women whose burden was as heavy as his own wife's had
been, Must he abandon that solace? In any case he could bestow his
money for charitable purposes, but it would not be the same, it would
not effect what he had aimed at.

Late in the afternoon he drew from the inner pocket of his coat a long
envelope and took thence a folded paper. It was covered with clerkly
writing, which he perused several times. At length he tore the paper
slowly across the middle, again tore the fragments, and threw them on
to the fire. . . .

Jane obeyed her grandfather's word and went out for an hour. She wished
for news of Pennyloaf, who had been ill, and was now very near the time
of her confinement. At the door of the house in Merlin Place she was
surprised to encounter Bob Hewett, who stood in a lounging attitude; he
had never appeared to her so disreputable--not that his clothes were
worse than usual, but his face and hands were dirty, and the former was
set in a hang-dog look.

'Is your wife upstairs, Mr. Hewett?' Jane asked, when he had nodded
sullenly in reply to her greeting.

'Yes; and somebody else too as could have been dispensed with. There's
another mouth to feed.'

'No, there ain't,' cried a woman's voice just behind him.

Jane recognised the speaker, a Mrs. Griffin, wh