s so lovely! Thou
couldst give them all the gracious garments of rose and blue and white
if thou wouldst! Why should these not be like those? They are hungry
even, and wan and torn. These too are thy children. There is wealth
enough in thy mines and in thy green fields, room enough in thy starry
spaces, O God!' But a voice--the echo of Falconer's teaching, awoke in
my heart--'Because I would have these more blessed than those, and those
more blessed with them, for they are all my children.'

By the Mall we came into Whitehall, and so to Westminster Bridge.
Falconer had changed his mind, and would cross at once. The present
bridge was not then finished, and the old bridge alongside of it was
still in use for pedestrians. We went upon it to reach the other side.
Its centre rose high above the other, for the line of the new bridge
ran like a chord across the arc of the old. Through chance gaps in the
boarding between, we looked down on the new portion which was as
yet used by carriages alone. The moon had, throughout the evening,
alternately shone in brilliance from amidst a lake of blue sky, and been
overwhelmed in billowy heaps of wind-tormented clouds. As we stood on
the apex of the bridge, looking at the night, the dark river, and
the mass of human effort about us, the clouds gathered and closed and
tumbled upon her in crowded layers. The wind howled through the arches
beneath, swept along the boarded fences, and whistled in their holes.
The gas-lights blew hither and thither, and were perplexed to live at
all.

We were standing at a spot where some shorter pieces had been used in
the hoarding; and, although I could not see over them, Falconer, whose
head rose more than half a foot above mine, was looking on the other
bridge below. Suddenly he grasped the top with his great hands, and his
huge frame was over it in an instant. I was on the top of the hoarding
the same moment, and saw him prostrate some twelve feet below. He was
up the next instant, and running with huge paces diagonally towards the
Surrey side. He had seen the figure of a woman come flying along from
the Westminster side, without bonnet or shawl. When she came under the
spot where we stood, she had turned across at an obtuse angle towards
the other side of the bridge, and Falconer, convinced that she meant to
throw herself into the river, went over as I have related. She had all
but scrambled over the fence--for there was no parapet yet--by the help
o