?"

Perhaps in the whole of her simple, sorrowful life Elsie Deans had
never seen anything more pathetic than that white face from which the
gray hair was so tightly strained, and those anxious questionings.
"And was this boy of yours," she said, "a good son?"

"A better never breathed," faltered poor Elsie, as she drew her hand
across her eyes; "he was my only bairn, was Willie."

"Why do you weep then?" returned Mrs. Trafford in her sad voice; "do
you not know that there are mothers in the heart of this great city
who would that their sons had never been born, or that they had seen
them die in their infancy. 'He was the only son of his mother, and she
was a widow,'" she continued to herself; then aloud, and with a
strange flickering smile that scarcely lighted up the pale face,
"Good-night to you--happy mother whose son perished on the Cumberland
Fells, for you will soon meet him again. Good-night, Mrs. Watkins;"
and with this abrupt adieu she went quickly out of the shop and was
lost in the surrounding fog.

"A fine figure of a woman," ejaculated Elsie, shaking her old head
with a puzzled look on her wrinkled face; "a fine, grand figure of a
woman, but surely an 'innocent,' neighbor?"

"An innocent!" repeated Mrs. Watkins with an indignant snort; "an
innocent! Mrs. Deans; why should such an idea enter your head? A
shrewder and a brighter woman than my lodger, Mrs. Trafford, never
breathed, though folks do say she has had a deal of trouble in her
life--but there, it is none of my business; I never meddle in the
affairs of my neighbors. I am not of the sort who let their tongue run
away with them," finished Mrs. Watkins with a virtuous toss of her
head.

CHAPTER VII.

NEA.

She was gay, tender, petulant and susceptible. All her feelings
were quick and ardent; and having never experienced
contradiction or restraint, she was little practiced in
self-control; nothing but the native goodness of her heart kept
her from running continually into error.--WASHINGTON IRVING.

If Mrs. Trafford had been questioned about her past life, she would
have replied in patriarchal language that few and evil had been her
days, and yet no life had ever opened with more promise than hers.

Many years, nearly a quarter of a century, before the gray-haired
weary woman had stood in Mrs. Watkins's shop, a young girl in a white
dress, with a face as radiant as the spring morning itself, leaned
over the balcony of Be