eyeing him pityingly.

"Oui, Monsieur, hungry and poor and friendless. Oh, Lord! but I've got a
dime to buy bread now, hih! hih! hih!"

"I am your friend, Richard; never go hungry when you are destitute. I am
not rich, but I always hope to be able to give you a piece of bread, and
you musn't call yourself friendless ever again."

The dwarf hitched himself round on his chair, and fixed his great
raw-looking eye inquisitively on the gentle face looking upon him.

"Friend to _me_, Monsieur, such a horrid little ape as me? Hih! hih!
can't think that."

"Don't call yourself such names, Richard. The hand that made me, made
you; and He has commanded us to love one another," said the boy,
sweetly.

"And you _can_ love me, you? Hih! no, no, no, I wasn't born to be loved,
only to be kicked round the world like a football while I live, and when
I die to be kicked into a pauper's grave. Hard lot! deformed,
friendless, wretched, poor. Nothing to love, no one to love me, hih!
wonder what I was born for. Monsieur, what hurt you?"

Guly smiled at the sudden transition in the dwarf's manner, and replied
briefly that he had been hurt with broken glass.

"Hih! that's bad. I must get down and go away--make you talk too
much--'hurt your head.' Always hurt people's heads, I do--that part
where their eyes are. Adieu, Monsieur."

The dwarf, after some labor, reached the floor, and succeeded in tucking
a crutch under either arm.

"Hope you'll get well, Monsieur."

"Be round to-morrow I hope, Richard; thank you."

"Hope so. Adieu."

"Adieu."

He swung away, and reached the door, but hobbled back to the bed again,
and raising his red, skinny fingers, took Guly's hand in his.

"You meant what you said, Monsieur, about loving one another?"

"Yes. Truly so, Richard."

"And I may think of you as loving even _me_?"

"As loving you, Richard. As loving you for one of the Great God's
cherished works, sent here expressly to call forth our love, and awaken
the dormant sympathies of our nature."

"May that Great God, bless you, Monsieur. Hih! hih! Adieu."

Once more he gained the door, and this time it closed behind him,
shutting him out. And Guly fell asleep, with the earnest blessing of the
poor deformed one brightening his dreams, and the holy words, "Love ye
one another," ringing sweetly through his heart.

CHAPTER XXVII.

"Nor heaven nor earth hath been at peace
To-night."

Shakspeare.

The Friday n