le Nell! The schoolmaster told them of her
last hours. They had read and talked to her a while, and then she had
sunk peacefully to sleep. They knew by what she said in her dreams that
they were of her wanderings, and of the people who had helped them, for
often she whispered, "God bless you." And she spoke once of beautiful
music that was in the air.

Opening her eyes at last, she begged that they would kiss her once
again. That done, she turned to the old man with a lovely smile on her
face--such, he said, as he had never seen--and threw both arms about his
neck. They did not know at first that she was dead.

They laid little Nell to rest the next day in the churchyard where she
had so often sat. The old man never realized quite what had happened. He
thought she would come back to him some day, and that then they would go
away together. He used to sit beside her grave and watch for her each
afternoon.

One day he did not return at the usual hour and they went to look for
him. He was lying dead upon the stone.

They buried him beside the child he had loved, and there in the
churchyard where they had often talked together they both lie side by
side.

None of those who had known little Nell ever forgot her story. After the
death of the old man, his brother, the Stranger who had sought them so
long, traveled in the footsteps of the two wanderers to search out and
reward all who had been kind to them--Mrs. Jarley of the waxwork, the
Punch-and-Judy showmen, he found them all. Even the rough canal boatmen
were not forgotten.

Kit's story got abroad and he found himself with hosts of friends, who
gave him a good position and secured his mother from want. So that his
greatest misfortune turned out, after all, to be his greatest good.

The little maid whose evidence cleared Kit of the terrible charge
against him lived to marry Dick Swiveller, the clerk of Brass, the
lawyer, while meek Mrs. Quilp, after her husband's drowning, married a
clever young man and lived a pleasant life on the dead dwarf's money.

The fate of the others, whose wickedness has been a part of this story,
was not so pleasant. The two gamblers who tempted the old man to steal
Mrs. Jarley's strong box were detected in another crime and sent to
jail. Brass became a convict, condemned to walk on a treadmill, chained
to a long line of other evil men, and dragging wherever he went a heavy
iron ball. After he was released he joined his wicked sister, Sall