o take you where you will have medical treatment and
care; it is your daughter's request," they told him in answer to his
trembling queries.

"Oh! yes, yes--Abby thinks I'll get my sight back, I suppose, if I'm
doctored up. Well, maybe so, but I'm pooty old--pooty old for the
doctors to patch up. But Abby has a powerful mind to plan things--a
powerful mind. 'Liz'beth never would a' thought of sending me
away--'Liz'beth was so easy like. Abby ought to a' been a man, she had.
She'd a' flung things."

So he babbled on as they carried him to the Poor House.

It was November, and the holidays were close at hand. Thanksgiving,
Christmas, New Year. Abby meant to enjoy them, and invited all her
relatives to a time of general feasting and merrymaking.

"I feel as if a great nightmare were lifted off my heart and brain, now
the old man has gone," she said. "He will be so much better off, and get
so much more skillful treatment, you know, in a place like that. They
are very kind in that institution, and so clean and nice, and he will
have plenty of company to keep him from being lonesome. We have been
all through it, during the last year, or else we never should have sent
him there. It is really an excellent home for him."

IV.

It was just a year later when a delicate, sweet-faced woman was shown
through the wards of that "excellent home" for the poor and unfortunate.
She walked with nervous haste, and her eyes glanced from room to room,
and from face to face, as if seeking, yet dreading, some object.

Presently the attendant pushed open a partly closed door, which led into
a small, close room, ventilated only by one high, narrow window.

"This is the room, I believe," he said, and the lady stepped in--and
paused. The air was close and impure, and almost stifled her.

On the opposite side of the room she saw a large crib with a cover or
lid which could be closed and locked when necessary, but which was
raised now. In this crib, upon a hard mattress and soiled pillow, lay
the emaciated form of an old man. He turned his sightless eyes toward
the door as he heard the sound of footsteps.

"What is wanted?" he asked, feebly; "does anybody want me? Has anybody
come for me?"

"O father, father!" cried the woman in a voice choked with sobs. "Don't
you know me? It is I--and I have come to take you away--to take you away
home with me. Will you go?"

A glow of delight shone over the old man's wasted face, like the last
rays