ER IV.

"It won't do, it won't do, Nannie," said the poor woman, wildly, as the
accumulated drops streamed like a rivulet down the steps of their
cellar; "we must manage to arouse your father, or the morning'll never
see him alive!" and she pushed and shook the inanimate clog that lay in
the corner, while the torrent still flowed on, until fear for the
child's safety made her quit her efforts with its father, and snatching
the infant from the cradle, and bidding Nannie follow her, she rushed
hastily out to seek help in order to remove her miserable husband. Not a
creature was stirring, for the bitterness of the storm had driven every
breathing thing under shelter. Still undaunted, she moves on, folding
her thin and drenched garments around the babe, until a watchman stops
her with a rude demand as to what calls her forth in the pitiless night?
She heeds not his roughness, but pulls him by the coat, while he vainly
endeavors to shake her off, and entreats him to aid her helpless
husband.

"Where is he, woman? and what do you want?" asks the besieged man, as
she continues to drag him along with a maniac's strength.

It is a long time that has elapsed since she left her threatened home,
and the waves have found their victim. They are not affrighted at the
hideous spectacle of a brutish and disfigured one, but they leap
caressingly about him, gliding over his pillow and hushing him into a
deep and lasting sleep. The empty cradle, and the stool, and the rough
board table with the flickering light upon it, float above the flowing
tide as the watchman enters the dismal cellar with the agonized woman
and her children. She springs to the corner, and while he feels for the
heavy mass with his club, she raises it with her tender hands, and
supports the drooping head upon her loving breast, while a cry of
anguish goes out from the heart that could never spurn him, even in his
lowest moments.

It is not of any use to chafe the cold temple, nor to try to bring back
the departed life! You'll be better without him, poor soul, though it is
dreadful to feel that he has gone hence in his sins! No wonder Nannie
shrinks away as the watchman, with the aid of one of his fellows whom a
spring of his rattle brings to the spot, bears their father out on their
way to the dead-house. He had never been kind to her since she can
remember, and his coming has occasioned only a terrible fear and dread
from day to day, yet she sobs out of sympathy