break. But her sobs were tearless. And,
oh, agony of agonies! unsought came the conviction, and she could not
send it away--to this had sunk her lofty idea of her Tom!--that he
would have had her take the money! More than once or twice, in the
ill-humors that followed a forced hilarity, he had forgotten his claims
to being a gentleman so far as--not exactly to reproach her with having
brought him to poverty--but to remind her that, if she was poor, she
was no poorer than she had been when dependent on the charity of a
distant relation!

The baby began to cry. She rose and took him from the sofa where
Godfrey had laid him when he was getting out the pocket-book, held him
fast to her bosom, as if by laying their two aching lives together they
might both be healed, and, rocking him to and fro, said to herself, for
the first time, that her trouble was greater than she could bear. "O
baby! baby! baby!" she cried, and her tears streamed on the little wan
face. But, as she sat with him in her arms, the blessed sleep came, and
the storm sank to a calm.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

RELIEF.

It was dark, utterly dark, when she woke. For a minute she could not
remember where she was. The candle had burned out: it must be late. The
baby was on her lap--still, very still. One faint gleam of satisfaction
crossed her "during dark" at the thought that he slept so peacefully,
hidden from the gloom which, somehow, appeared to be all the same gloom
outside and inside of her. In that gloom she sat alone.

Suddenly a prayer was in her heart. It was moving there as of itself.
It had come there by no calling of it thither, by no conscious will of
hers. "O God," she cried, "I am desolate!--Is there no help for me?"
And therewith she knew that she had prayed, and knew that never in her
life had she prayed before.

She started to her feet in an agony: a horrible fear had taken
possession of her. With one arm she held the child fast to her bosom,
with the other hand searched in vain to find a match. And still, as she
searched, the baby seemed to grow heavier upon her arm, and the fear
sickened more and more at her heart.

At last she had light! and the face of the child came out of the
darkness. But the child himself had gone away into it. The Unspeakable
had come while she slept--had come and gone, and taken her child with
him. What was left of him was no more good to kiss than the last doll
of her childhood!

When Tom came home, there wa