omen sat by the chimney,
and another by a low bed, covered with a torn patchwork counterpane,
spelling out a chapter in the Bible. We paused for a moment to hear what
she was reading. Had the book been opened by chance, or by design? It
was the story of David and Bathsheba. Moans came from the bed, but the
candle in a bottle, by which the woman was reading, was so placed that
we could not see the sufferer.

We stood still and did not interrupt the reading.

'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed a coarse voice from the side of the chimney: 'the
saint, you see, was no better than some of the rest of us!'

'I think he was a good deal worse just then,' said Falconer, stepping
forward.

'Gracious! there's Mr. Falconer,' said another woman, rising, and
speaking in a flattering tone.

'Then,' remarked the former speaker, 'there's a chance for old Moll and
me yet. King David was a saint, wasn't he? Ha! ha!'

'Yes, and you might be one too, if you were as sorry for your faults as
he was for his.'

'Sorry, indeed! I'll be damned if I be sorry. What have I to be sorry
for? Where's the harm in turning an honest penny? I ha' took no man's
wife, nor murdered himself neither. There's yer saints! He was a rum
'un. Ha! ha!'

Falconer approached her, bent down and whispered something no one could
hear but herself. She gave a smothered cry, and was silent.

'Give me the book,' he said, turning towards the bed. 'I'll read you
something better than that. I'll read about some one that never did
anything wrong.'

'I don't believe there never was no sich a man,' said the previous
reader, as she handed him the book, grudgingly.

'Not Jesus Christ himself?' said Falconer.

'Oh! I didn't know as you meant him.'

'Of course I meant him. There never was another.'

'I have heard tell--p'raps it was yourself, sir--as how he didn't come
down upon us over hard after all, bless him!'

Falconer sat down on the side of the bed, and read the story of Simon
the Pharisee and the woman that was a sinner. When he ceased, the
silence that followed was broken by a sob from somewhere in the room.
The sick woman stopped her moaning, and said,

'Turn down the leaf there, please, sir. Lilywhite will read it to me
when you're gone.'

The some one sobbed again. It was a young slender girl, with a face
disfigured by the small-pox, and, save for the tearful look it wore,
poor and expressionless. Falconer said something gentle to her.

'Will he ever come again?'