t as the tones of the organ swelled and the music
grew louder, old Richard Dryce sat down in the corner of his own pew and
leaned his head upon the book-board, with his hands clasped before his
face. Not till the warm tears had trickled from between his fingers did
he raise his head, and then it was to look round him to the cushion at
the other end of the pew, for from some place near him he thought he had
heard a sound that was out of all harmony with the organ, but not
altogether apart from the associations of the Christmas hymn--the
wailing of a child. Another moment and he was bending over a bundle
seemingly composed of a coarse blue cloak, but from which there
presently came out a baby hand and, the covering once pulled aside, a
little round rosy face in which a pair of large blue eyes were wide
awake in utter astonishment. Who can tell what had been the thoughts
busy in old Dryce's mind? Was it prayer? Was it that yearning which
finds no words of entreaty, but yet ardently and dumbly implores--all
vaguely--that the crooked paths of former error may be made straight at
last--that the rough places of a mistaken course may become divinely
plain? He could not tell; and yet in some way he accepted this child as
a visible answer to a petition that he had meant to frame. When the
organist and the sextoness came down presently, and with indignant
virtue advised the removal of the child to the workhouse, he regarded
their suggestion as little less than impious, and expressed his
determination of taking the little one home with him.

His old housekeeper and the younger servants were not a little surprised
to see the merchant come home with such a companion; but Mr. Dryce was
master in his own house, and the little guest was fed. Then Doctor Banks
was sent for, and he declared that it would be necessary to provide a
nurse, while, as luck would have it, he had that very morning been sent
for to see a casual applicant for relief at the Union workhouse--a woman
who had just lost a child. Temporarily she might do well enough, and
Doctor Banks wanted to get home to dinner; so away went the housekeeper
in a cab with a letter from the doctor, and in two hours came back
bringing with her a pale pretty young woman whose name was Jane Harris,
and who, her husband having gone abroad and left her with a child which
she had just lost, was reduced to apply at the workhouse. She was so
timid, and had at first such a scared look, that Mr. Dr