vide medicine for the sick."

"I can't do it," he replied. "You should be shankful for what you
get."

His motive in offering her the dollar, was not from a charitable
feeling, it was only to get rid of a beggar.

"Oh God!" she groaned, rising from her knees, and resting her elbow on
an iron safe near by. "Have you a heart?" she exclaimed wildly, "I
tell you my child is ill, perhaps at this moment dying, aid me! aid
me! Do not turn away a miserable mother from your door to witness her
child die through destitution, when it is in your power to relieve its
sufferings, and save it, so that it may live to be a blessing and
solace to me. If not for my sake, if not for the sake of the child,
let me appeal to you for charity, for the sake of him, who is now
imprisoned in a foreign dungeon. He left me to defend you from the
enemy--left his wife and children to starve and suffer, for the
purpose of aiding in that holy cause we are now engaged in conflict
for. For his sake, if for no other, give me the means of saving my
child."

He did not reply to her passionate words, but simply rang a bell that
stood on the table before which he was seated. His clerk answered the
summons.

"If you vont quit mithout my making you," he observed to Mrs.
Wentworth in a brutal tone, "I must send for a police officer to take
away. Gootness," he continued, speaking to himself, "I pelieve te
voman is mat."

"Save yourself the trouble," she replied, "I will leave. I am not yet
mad," she added. "But, oh, God! the hour is fast approaching when
madness must hold possession of my mind. I go to my child--my poor
dying child. Oh, Heaven, help me!"

As she moved her hand from the safe, she perceived a small package of
money lying on it. She paused and looked around. The clerk had
withdrawn at a sign from Mr. Swartz, while that gentleman was gazing
intently at the open pages of a ledger, that lay before him. For a
moment she hesitated and trembled from head to foot, while the warm
blood rushed to her cheeks, until they were a deep crimson hue.
Swiftly she extended her hand towards the package, and grasped it; in
another instant it was concealed in her dress, and the act of despair
was accomplished.

"God pity me!" she exclaimed, as she left the room and departed from
the scene of her involuntary crime.

Despair had induced her to commit a theft, but no angel of God is
purer in mind than was the Soldier's Wife, when she did so. It was the
result