ls, doctors to deal with
diseases, and the clergy to speak a word in season to all, from the
murderer on the scaffold to the maid who had misconducted herself. There
was nothing eccentric about Mrs. Caldwell; she accepted the world just
as she found it, and was satisfied to know that effects were being dealt
with. Causes she never considered, because she knew nothing about them.

But she was ill at ease that morning, and did think it rather hard
that she should not have had time to recover from her last illness.
She acknowledged to herself that she was very weak, that it was hard
to drag the darning-needle through that worn stocking, and, oh dear!
the holes were so many and so big that week, and there were such
quantities of other things to be done, clothes mended and made for the
children, besides household matters to be seen to generally; why
wasn't she strong? That was the only thing she repined about, poor
woman, her want of physical strength. She would work until she
dropped, however, and mortal man could expect no more of her, she
assured herself with a sigh of satisfaction, in anticipation of the
inevitable event which would lay her by, and so release her from all
immediate responsibility. Worn and weary working mothers, often
uncomplaining victims of the cruelest exactions, toilers whose day's
work is never done, no wonder they welcome even the illness which
enforces rest in bed, the one holiday that is ever allowed them. Mrs.
Caldwell thought again of the fire and the book. She had read a good
deal at one time, and had even been able to play, and sing, and draw,
and paint with a dainty touch; but since her marriage, the many
children, the small means, and the failing strength had made all such
pursuits an impossible luxury. The fire and the book--who knows what
they might not have meant, what a benign difference the small
relaxation allowed to the mother at this critical time might not have
made in the temperament of the child? Perhaps, if we could read the
events even of that one day aright, we should find in them the clue to
all that was inexplicable in its subsequent career.

In deciding that she could not afford a fire for herself, Mrs.
Caldwell had glanced round the room, and noticed that the whisky
bottle on the sideboard was all but empty. She got up hastily, and
went into the kitchen.

"I had quite forgotten the whisky," she said to the maid-of-all-work,
who was scraping potatoes at the sink. "Your m