bed,
the stained walls, and bare uneven floor. On an iron bedstead, at the
foot of the large bed, lay Willie, restless and coughing, with the elder
girl beside him fast asleep; the other girl lay beside her mother, and
the wooden box with rockers, which held the baby, stood within reach of
Mrs. Hurd's arm.

He made her no answer, but went to look at the coughing boy, who had
been in bed for a week with bronchitis.

"You've never been and got in Westall's way again?" she said anxiously.
"It's no good my tryin' to get a wink o' sleep when you're out like
this."

"Don't you worrit yourself," he said to her, not roughly, but decidedly.
"I'm all right. This boy's bad, Minta."

"Yes, an' I kep' up the fire an' put the spout on the kettle, too." She
pointed to the grate and to the thin line of steam, which was doing its
powerless best against the arctic cold of the room.

Hurd bent over the boy and tried to put him comfortable. The child, weak
and feverish, only began to cry--a hoarse bronchial crying, which
threatened to wake the baby. He could not be stopped, so Hurd made haste
to take off his own coat and boots, and then lifted the poor soul in his
arms.

"You'll be quiet, Will, and go sleep, won't yer, if daddy takes keer on
you?"

He wrapped his own coat round the little fellow, and lying down beside
his wife, took him on his arm and drew the thin brown blankets over
himself and his charge. He himself was warm with exercise, and in a
little while the huddling creatures on either side of him were warm too.
The quick, panting breath of the boy soon showed that he was asleep. His
father, too, sank almost instantly into deep gulfs of sleep. Only the
wife--nervous, overdone, and possessed by a thousand fears--lay tossing
and wakeful hour after hour, while the still glory of the winter night
passed by.

CHAPTER II.

"Well, Marcella, have you and Lady Winterbourne arranged your classes?"

Mrs. Boyce was stooping over a piece of needlework beside a window in
the Mellor drawing-room, trying to catch the rapidly failing light. It
was one of the last days of December. Marcella had just come in from the
village rather early, for they were expecting a visitor to arrive about
tea time, and had thrown herself, tired, into a chair near her mother.

"We have got about ten or eleven of the younger women to join; none of
the old ones will come," said Marcella. "Lady Winterbourne has heard of
a capital teacher from Dun