ways to some new part of the town, looking wistfully with
dumb entreaty into people's faces; sometimes catching a glimpse of a
figure which had a kind of momentary likeness to her child's, and
following that figure with never-wearying perseverance, till some light
from shop or lamp showed the cold strange face which was not her
daughter's. Once or twice a kind-hearted passer-by, struck by her look
of yearning woe, turned back and offered help, or asked her what she
wanted. When so spoken to, she answered only, "You don't know a poor
girl they call Lizzie Leigh, do you?" and when they denied all knowledge,
she shook her head, and went on again. I think they believed her to be
crazy. But she never spoke first to any one. She sometimes took a few
minutes' rest on the door-steps, and sometimes (very seldom) covered her
face and cried; but she could not afford to lose time and chances in this
way; while her eyes were blinded with tears, the lost one might pass by
unseen.

One evening, in the rich time of shortening autumn-days, Will saw an old
man, who, without being absolutely drunk, could not guide himself rightly
along the foot-path, and was mocked for his unsteadiness of gait by the
idle boys of the neighbourhood. For his father's sake, Will regarded old
age with tenderness, even when most degraded and removed from the stern
virtues which dignified that father; so he took the old man home, and
seemed to believe his often-repeated assertions, that he drank nothing
but water. The stranger tried to stiffen himself up into steadiness as
he drew nearer home, as if there some one there for whose respect he
cared even in his half-intoxicated state, or whose feelings he feared to
grieve. His home was exquisitely clean and neat, even in outside
appearance; threshold, window, and windowsill were outward signs of some
spirit of purity within. Will was rewarded for his attention by a bright
glance of thanks, succeeded by a blush of shame, from a young woman of
twenty or thereabouts. She did not speak or second her father's
hospitable invitations to him to be seated. She seemed unwilling that a
stranger should witness her father's attempts at stately sobriety, and
Will could not bear to stay and see her distress. But when the old man,
with many a flabby shake of the hand, kept asking him to come again some
other evening, and see them, Will sought her downcast eyes, and, though
he could not read their veiled meaning, he ans