was well, perhaps, that he was blind, he knew so little of
what had come on them. There, where the black marks were on the wall,
there had hung two pictures. Margret and her father religiously
believed them to be a Tintoret and Copley. Well, they were gone now.
He had been used to dust them with a light brush every morning,
himself, but now he said always,--

"You can clean the pictures to-day, Margret. Be careful, my child."

And Margret would remember the greasy Irishman who had tucked them
under his arm, and flung them into a cart, her blood growing hotter in
her veins.

It was the same through all the house; there was not a niche in the
bare rooms that did not recall a something gone,--something that should
return. She willed that, that evening, standing by the dim fire. What
women will, whose eyes are slow, attentive, still, as this Margret's,
usually comes to pass.

The red fire-glow suited her; another glow, warming her floating fancy,
mingled with it, giving her every-day purpose the trait of heroism.
The old spirit of the dead chivalry, of succour to the weak, life-long
self-denial,--did it need the sand waste of Palestine or a tournament
to call it into life? Down in that trading town, in the thick of its
mills and drays, it could live, she thought. That very night, perhaps,
in some of those fetid cellars or sunken shanties, there were vigils
kept of purpose as unselfish, prayer as heaven-commanding, as that of
the old aspirants for knighthood. She, too,--her quiet face stirred
with a simple, childish smile, like her father's.

"Why, mother!" she said, stroking down the gray hair under the cap,
"shall you sleep here all night?" laughing.

A cheery, tender laugh, this woman's was,--seldom heard,--not far from
tears.

Mrs. Howth roused herself. Just then, a broad, high-shouldered man, in
a gray flannel shirt, and shoes redolent of the stable, appeared at the
door. Margret looked at him as if he were an accusing spirit,--coming
down, as woman must, from heights of self-renunciation or bold resolve,
to an undarned stocking or an uncooked meal.

"Kittle's b'ilin'," he announced, flinging in the information as a
general gratuity.

"That will do, Joel," said Mrs. Howth.

The tone of stately blandness which Mrs. Howth erected as a shield
between herself and "that class of people" was a study: a success; the
resume of her experience in the combat that had devoured half her life,
like that of othe