ound on
him.

'Ask me that by and by. Come a little farther. Here, in this next house
but one, there is a man sick with rheumatism--in a fever; when I first
saw him he was lying there shivering and in great pain, with no fire;
and his daughter, a girl of perhaps a dozen years old, was trying to
light a fire with a few splinters of sticks that she had picked up.
That was last winter, in cold weather. They were poverty-stricken,
since the man had been some time out of work.'

'Well?' said Betty. 'I must not repeat my question, but what is all
this to me? I have no power to help them. Do you know these people
yourself?'

'Yes, I know them. In the last house of the row there is another old
woman I want to tell you of; and then we will go. She is not ill, nor
disabled; she is only very old and quite alone. She is not unhappy
either, for she is a true old Christian. But think of this: in the room
which she occupies, which is half underground, there is just one hour
in the day when a sunbeam can find entrance. For that hour she watches;
and when the sky is not clouded, and it comes, she takes her Bible and
holds it in the sunshine to read for that blessed hour. It is all she
has in the twenty-four. The rest of the time she must only think of
what she has read; the place is too dark for any more.'

'Do let us go!' said Betty; and she turned, and almost fled back to the
alley, and through the alley back to the street. There they walked more
moderately a space of some rods before she found breath and words. She
faced round on her conductor again.

'Why do you take me to such a place, and tell me such things?'

'Will you let that question still rest a little while?' Almost as he
spoke Pitt called another cab, and Betty and he were presently speeding
on again, whither she knew not. It was a good time to talk, and she
repeated her question.

'Instead of answering you, I would like to put a question on my side,'
he returned. 'What do you think is duty, on the part of a servant of
Christ, towards such cases?'

'Pray tell me, is there not some system of poor relief in this place?'

'Yes, there is the parish help. And sorrowful help it is! The parishes
are often very large, the sufferers very many, the cases of fraud and
trickery almost--perhaps quite--as numerous as those at least which
come to the notice of the parish authorities. The parish authorities
are but average men; is it wonderful if they are hard administrators? I