to be lifted,
and a message had been sent to Mrs. Holman.

Perhaps they delayed purposely; a little later in the evening when it
was darker, and an undesirable sensation in the street would be avoided.

Silla's face was stiff with crying. There was no one in the room but her
and Nikolai.

He stood by the counter, and she was sitting with her back to the
window; there was no sound but the humming of a gnat in the
half-darkness up under the curtain.

At last he broke the silence.

"He was kind, both to you and to me, as often as he dared be, you know."

Silla did not answer.

"He always dreaded going home at night so, you know. He'll be spared
that now, and setting his foot inside this public-house again, too!"

"Father! Father!" broke from Silla, followed by a fit of violent
sobbing.

"Listen, Silla!" he said, interrupted by the repressed weight on his own
breast. "If you have no father, you have some one here who will take
care of you, and knows what it is--I have never had any father either,
nor ever seen any. And I _will_ be a smith, as there won't be any more
block-making for you now. I only wanted to tell you, so that you can
remember it afterwards," he added softly--it did not look as if Silla
were listening to him.

"And this evening I'll follow you right to the corner, and I'll stand
there until everything is in, and I shall be outside to-night; so you
know it, if anything is wanted."

"Yes, stay outside, Nikolai!" she whispered.

The public-house bear and the two bearers came in. They lifted the
stretcher out through the door, and, with a little difficulty at the
turn, down the steps, where a few spectators stood.

And so they went up the street--the dead with the two bearers and the
public-house bear in front, and Silla and Nikolai behind.

At the place where they were to part, he pressed the basket, which she
had forgotten, into her hand, and then stood looking after them.

CHAPTER VI

THE FACTORY GIRLS

What becomes of all the swarm of orphan children down in the by-streets
and outskirt alleys of the capital--children of whom no one has any
account, and no one takes any account, who swarm down there only one
floor higher, so to speak, than the spawn and small fry which are
floating below in the sea among the quay piles, and which will one day
become large male and female fish?

Disease wields a broad broom in the earliest age. The harbour takes them
into its embrace; the street