rns down a
narrow, crooked alley and enters a tumble-down house at the farther end.
Bad as was the tenement home of her early childhood, this place is far
worse, and a wave of pity fills Jane's heart as she thinks of that
delicate, patient child growing up in surroundings like these. Marie
herself opens the door in response to Jane's knock, her eyes anxiously
asking the question her lips dare not utter.

"Good news, little one, good news," cried Jane joyously, advancing into
the room and taking in at a glance the terrible poverty of the place,
the shabbiness of the woman laying the table for supper, and of the
barefooted, ragged children who stare at her in open-mouthed
astonishment. "Where is your father, Marie? Take me to him at once for I
bring him what he asked for--one more chance to make good."

In answer to Marie's call, the door leading into an adjoining room opens
and a man steps forth. The light of the lamp shines full upon his face,
and for one breathless moment they face each other in silence, the woman
who has succeeded in life, the man who has failed, and to whom she
brings one last chance of redeeming his failure.

Despite the change of name and the greater changes wrought by the hand
of time, she knows him at once. It is Richard, her brother.

THE ELEVENTH HOUR.

It was an ordinary tenement house of the poorest class, exactly like its
neighbors, which lined both sides of the dingy street. The door was
always open, more than half the time hanging by one hinge, the stairways
were dark and crooked, the rooms small and dirty. In a back kitchen on
the topmost floor, a man sat, or rather huddled, in a chair drawn close
to the stove. His eyes were closed and his head drooped wearily against
the back of the chair. That last spell of coughing had been unusually
severe and had left him weak and breathless. A plague on the cough,
anyway. Why was it he could not get rid of it? The doctor from the
dispensary, the district nurse, even Maggie, had assured him that with
the coming of summer this cold of his would be better. Summer was here,
though you would not think so to-day with this raw east wind and
drizzling rain, and instead of being better he was worse, decidedly
worse. Could it be that they were all wrong and Nancy alone was in the
right? Nancy, who, of all that approached him, was the only one who
dared to tell him the truth. The truth? No, it was a lie, a lie; he was
not dying, he was going to be