was closed.

"Why did you bring me here?" asked the old man fiercely, "I cannot bear
these close eternal streets. We came from a quiet part. Why did you
force me to leave it?"

"Because I must have that dream I told you of, no more," said the child,
"and we must live among poor people or it will come again. Dear
grandfather, you are old and weak, I know; but look at me. I never will
complain if you will not, but I have some suffering indeed."

"Ah! Poor, houseless, wandering, motherless child!" cried the old man,
gazing as if for the first time upon her anxious face, her
travel-stained dress, and bruised and swollen feet. "Has all my agony of
care brought her to this at last? Was I a happy man once, and have I
lost happiness and all I had, for this?"

Wandering on, they took shelter in an old doorway from which the figure
of a man came forth, who, touched with the misery of their situation,
and with Nell's drenched condition, offered them such lodging as he had
at his command, in the great foundry where he was employed. He led them
through the bewildering sights and deafening sounds of the huge
building, to his furnace, and there spread Nell's little cloak upon a
heap of ashes, and showing her where to hang her outer clothes to dry,
signed to her and the old man to lie down and sleep. The warmth of her
bed, combined with her great fatigue, caused the tumult of the place to
lull the child to sleep, and the old man was stretched beside her, as
she lay and dreamed. On the following morning her friend shared his
breakfast with the child and her grandfather, and parting with them left
in Nell's hand two battered smoke-encrusted penny pieces. Who knows but
they shone as brightly in the eyes of angels as golden gifts that have
been chronicled on tombs?

With an intense longing for pure air and open country, they toiled
slowly on, the child walking with extreme difficulty, for the pains that
racked her joints were of no common severity, and every exertion
increased them. But they wrung from her no complaint, as the two
proceeded slowly on, clearing the town in course of time. They slept
that night with nothing between them and the sky, amid the horrors of a
manufacturing suburb, and who shall tell the terrors of that night to
the young wandering child.

And yet she had no fear for herself, for she was past it, but put up a
prayer for the old man. A penny loaf was all that they had had that day.
It was very little, but e