er dearest friend would not
have recognized. Presently she stopped.

Raising her hands, the shining hair rippling over her shoulders like a
garment, she lifted her face heavenward.

"My Father!" she whispered, brokenly, "he is asleep. Touch his eyes with
kindly fingers that the scales may drop away. Put the hollow of thy hand
around his heart and kindle there the love that means the brotherhood of
man, for I love him--I love him!"

Even as she stood, with her face upturned from the wealth of flowing
hair, the man of her prayer was in the toils of fate, seeing a "face"
and hearing a voice that touched his ear and clung to his heart, "like
the wail of a lost soul."

[Illustration: _"God," she cried, "Look at my hands!"_]

CHAPTER VIII.

"WHAT FOR."

Had Jean Thorn been less interested in the family of Damon Crowley she
might have thought it impossible to keep track of them as they moved
about. Mr. Crowley reformed every time he got drunk, and got drunk every
time he reformed. At such times he made the living place he called home,
whether in the filthy garret or rickety shanty, a bedlam. At the present
period of their existence the Crowleys were living in a forlorn hovel on
the outskirts of the city.

Mr. Crowley thought himself lucky if he chanced to be about when one of
Miss Thorn's visits took place, for she paid well for the plain work
Mrs. Crowley did, and he always came in for a share. The time had been
when this man would have blushed at the thought of asking his wife, or,
indeed, any one, for help, but that time had gradually gone by as his
manhood dissolved itself in drink. Now he could whine and beg and, not
being successful that way, curse and beat to gain his end. He wanted
money for whisky worse than ever now, and had less, but the burning in
his stomach grew no less to suit the impoverished condition of his
purse.

The disease caused by the legalized drink traffic was eating his life
away little by little, and as the fire burned it called for more fuel.

One night when every little gland and fibre in his whole being and all
the great ulcers in his diseased stomach seemed like fierce flames
cutting and licking and torturing him, half-drunk, he staggered from one
grog shop to another, begging for something to drink.

He had hung around the shanty home until he was almost sure that Miss
Thorn would not come, then had started out to try his chances. He had
begged a little, had pawned a garme