ven you that
basket--it seems but a common basket too."

"I have had it--oh, ever since--since--I don't know how long! It came
with me from France--it was full of little toys. They are gone--I am so
sorry!"

"How old are you?"

"I don't know."

"My pretty one," said the stranger, with deep pity in his rich voice,
"your mother should not let you go out alone at this hour."

"Mother!--mother!" repeated the girl, in a tone of surprise.

"Have you no mother?"

"No! I had a father once. But he died, they say. I did not see him die.
I sometimes cry when I think that I shall never, never see him again!
But," she said, changing her accent from melancholy almost to joy, "he
is to have a grave here like the other girl's fathers--a fine stone upon
it--and all to be done with my money!"

"Your money, my child?"

"Yes; the money I make. I sell my work and take the money to my
grandfather; but I lay by a little every week for a gravestone for my
father."

"Will the gravestone be placed in that churchyard?" They were now in
another lane; and, as he spoke, the stranger checked her, and bending
down to look into her face, he murmured to himself, "Is it possible?--it
must be--it must!"

"Yes! I love that churchyard--my brother told me to put flowers there;
and grandfather and I sit there in the summer, without speaking. But I
don't talk much, I like singing better:--

"'All things that good and harmless are
Are taught, they say, to sing
The maiden resting at her work,
The bird upon the wing;
The little ones at church, in prayer;
The angels in the sky
The angels less when babes are born
Than when the aged die.'"

And unconscious of the latent moral, dark or cheering, according as we
estimate the value of this life, couched in the concluding rhyme, Fanny
turned round to the stranger, and said, "Why should the angels be glad
when the aged die?"

"That they are released from a false, unjust, and miserable world, in
which the first man was a rebel, and the second a murderer!" muttered
the stranger between his teeth, which he gnashed as he spoke.

The girl did not understand him: she shook her head gently, and made no
reply. A few moments, and she paused before a small house.

"This is my home."

"It is so," said her companion, examining the exterior of the house with
an earnest gaze; "and your name is Fanny."

"Yes--every one knows Fanny. Come in;" and