fter
a while she started up, saying something about the change of weather,
and, slipping away, thrust a match between the bars of the grate. The
old man turned about to the fire, and she from her little room brought a
low sewing-chair and sat beside him, laying her head on his knee, and he
stroking her brow with his brown palm.

And then, in an altered--a low, sad tone--he began a monotonous recital.

Thus they sat, he talking very steadily and she listening, until all the
neighborhood was wrapped in slumber,--all the neighbors, but not Kookoo.

Kookoo in his old age had become a great eavesdropper; his ear and eye
took turns at the keyhole that night, for he tells things that were not
intended for outside hearers. He heard the girl sobbing, and the old man
saying, "But you must go now. You cannot stay with me safely or
decently, much as I wish it. The Lord only knows how I'm to bear it, or
where you're to go; but He's your Lord, child, and He'll make a place
for you. I was your grandfather's death; I frittered your poor, dead
mother's fortune away: let that be the last damage I do.

"I have always meant everything for the best," he added half in
soliloquy.

From all Kookoo could gather, he must have been telling her the very
story just recounted. She had dropped quite to the floor, hiding her
face in her hands, and was saying between her sobs, "I cannot go, Papa
George; oh, Papa George, I cannot go!"

Just then 'Sieur George, kaving kept a good resolution all day, was
encouraged by the orphan's pitiful tones to contemplate the most
senseless act he ever attempted to commit. He said to the sobbing girl
that she was not of his blood; that she was nothing to him by natural
ties; that his covenant was with her grandsire to care for his
offspring; and though it had been poorly kept, it might be breaking it
worse than ever to turn her out upon ever so kind a world.

"I have tried to be good to you all these years. When I took you, a wee
little baby, I took you for better or worse. I intended to do well by
you all your childhood-days, and to do best at last. I thought surely we
should be living well by this time, and you could choose from a world
full of homes and a world full of friends.

"I don't see how I missed it!" Here he paused a moment in meditation,
and presently resumed with some suddenness:

"I thought that education, far better than Mother Nativity has given
you, should have afforded your sweet charms a