argaret!"

She sunk down in a chair, and pressed the infant to her breast, and wept
over it. Sometimes, she released it from her embrace, to look anxiously
in its face: then strained it to her bosom again. At those times, when
she gazed upon it, then it was that something fierce and terrible began
to mingle with her love. Then it was that her old father quailed.

"Follow her!" was sounded through the house. "Learn it, from the
creature dearest to your heart!"

"Margaret," said Fern, bending over her, and kissing her upon the brow:
"I thank you for the last time. Good night. Good bye! Put your hand in
mine, and tell me you'll forget me from this hour, and try to think the
end of me was here."

She called to him; but he was gone. She sat down stupefied, until her
infant roused her to a sense of hunger, cold, and darkness. She paced
the room with it the livelong night, hushing it and soothing it. She
said at intervals, "Like Lilian when her mother died and left her!" Why
was her step so quick, her eyes so wild, her love so fierce and
terrible, whenever she repeated those words?

"But, it is Love," said Trotty. "It is Love. She'll never cease to love
it. My poor Meg!"

She dressed the child next morning with unusual care--ah, vain
expenditure of care upon such squalid robes!--and once more tried to
find some means of life. It was the last day of the Old Year. She tried
till night, and never broke her fast. She tried in vain.

She mingled with an abject crowd, who tarried in the snow, until it
pleased some officer appointed to dispense the public charity (the
lawful charity; not that once preached upon a Mount), to call them in,
and question them, and say to this one, "Go to such a place," to that
one, "Come next week;" to make a foot-ball of another wretch, and pass
him here and there, from hand to hand, from house to house, until he
wearied and lay down to die; or started up and robbed, and so became a
higher sort of criminal, whose claims allowed of no delay. Here, too,
she failed.

She loved her child, and wished to have it lying on her breast. And that
was quite enough.

It was night: a bleak, dark, cutting night: when pressing the child
close to her for warmth, she arrived outside the house she called her
home. She was so faint and giddy, that she saw no one standing in the
doorway until she was close upon it, and about to enter. Then, she
recognized the master of the house, who had so disposed himself--with