h
David started, looked all around him, and then moved on as commanded.
His back, always bent, and his gait, always decrepit and shuffling, were
now pitiably so, and he had a long, long journey before him; but, thanks
be to Him whose omnipotent care protects and watches over the poor in
spirit, he had escaped a far longer one. On and on he went, not cold
now, not thinking, not in haste; passing thick-coated travellers who
ran, and clapped their hands, and swung their arms for warmth; passing
gay companies in cabs that rolled over the snow as softly as footsteps
on velvet. But he heeded nothing of all this, and staggered onward to
his own poor home.

A light was streaming out from the windows of the old warehouse,
crossing the snow piled on the platform above and slanting on the heaps
beneath. It was an inviting glimmer, a herald from within to all cold
travellers without of the blessedness of home, and, as David approached
the corner of the court, his eye was greeted cheerily by its "Welcome
home!" and, indeed, it was the first thing he had distinctly seen since
leaving the house of Mr. Griffin. But his heart failed him. How could he
face his dear girls again and tell them of the destitution of to-morrow?
Of the worse than poverty? Thus he thought, and lingered, and slunk
away by turns, but the ray of home-born light allured him, impassively,
into its midst, and as he stood over against the house, a poor, weak,
old man, rambling in his mind, and heroically deciding rather to leave
them in peace to-night, one more night, and return to them to-morrow, a
window was thrown up, and Jacob Tripple, putting forth his head, looked
up and down the court, and then directly in front of him, where David
stood immovable in the light.

"Why, there he is, now!" he cried. "What's gone amiss, David? What's
kept you so long? Here he is! Here he is!" he exclaimed again and again,
and, drawing in his head in much less time than the words could be said,
Jacob Tripple, followed by the girls, was down-stairs, was--still
followed by the girls--out in the snow, and had forcibly carried David
up with them.

They laid him on the settee, moaning and crying aloud against Emanuel
Griffin, and repeating again and again that they were "Beggars, beggars,
beggars!" and exclaiming, "My poor Little Scout! My poor girls! My
poor----"

"They shall not suffer, father!" said a new voice, the sound of which
raised him up with wide-opened eyes and palsied h