University of Virginia Library

28. Chapter XXVIII.
Scenes in Kolephat College.

MR. GRANBY was not one to forget his good intentions;
and the project of establishing a day-school,
under Margaret Winston's care, in the very heart of that
moral desert which was bounded by the confines of Kolephat
College, occupied his thoughts constantly, from the
hour of his conversation with the seamstress, until the
morning, three days afterwards, when, accompanied by
Samson and Rob Morrison, he found himself seated in an
apartment of the tenant-house just converted into a
school-room, by the introduction of a few deal benches and
a low desk, with a black-board elevated behind it. There
was but little room to spare in the place, after disposition
of those articles; for it was the miserable apartment that
had been occupied by the mother of little Fanny, and in
which that forsaken woman had perished in darkness and
alone. But its more gloomy features were now concealed
by a coat of whitewash on the walls, and some necessary
ventilation had been procured by means of an aperture cut
above the door, corresponding to a plate of perforated tin
in the window. In this rude temple of letters, Mr. Granby

now filled a chair, near the desk, at which Margaret was
seated, whilst Samson stood by the door, and a dozen
children of tender ages, including Rob, Harry, and Fanny,
were ranged upon the wooden benches.

The group of stranger urchins was motley enough, it
must be said. Gathered from the alley without, and
dingy entries within, they had been bribed by Samson,
with pieces of bread, coaxed by Fanny and Harry, with
childish argument, and lured not a little, at last, by the
kind voice of Margaret, to trust themselves over the
threshold of that untried bourne—a school-room. Clothed,
or rather unclad, in habitual tatters, their hands begrimed
with filth, eyes bleared, and hair matted, these little
waifs of Kolephat College were aught but agreeable to a
refined taste, and the odor of their old rags, when it
became released by the heat of the stove, was anything
but pleasant to the senses. Their faces, too, as they were
turned in stupid wonder towards Margaret, exhibited little
to attract love or sympathy; for, infants as they were,
there could yet be noticed traits of vindictive passion,
precocious cunning, and leering mischief, in the lineaments
that were half concealed by indurated dirt. Nevertheless,
to the eyes of Mr. Granby and his protegee, Margaret, the
row of ragged children was full of deep interest, since, in
their estimation, each individual in it was representative
of diverse neglected classes of the human family. The
weird-looking boy who sat upon the right, and who had
yesterday stood at a street-crossing, sweeping the pavement,
with a shrill cry of “Please, gi'me penny,” to every
passer-by—that urchin, with unkempt, tangled hair, face

prematurely old, and mouth distorted by an elfin grin—
that infant outcast was, in their regard, a holy thing—for
it was human, instinct with life, endued with a soul. It
occupied, in their understanding, more space than the
square of pine board which formed its seat; for it was an
integer of creation, a tabernacle of spirit, a link in the
chain of all immortal beings. And though, like the rest
of its sordid companions, it rested uneasily immobile,
shrinking, as it were, shamefaced, down to dust—like unto
the lowest scale of God's creatures. Mr. Granby and
Margaret felt that it was kindred even with them, and the
former whispered, earnestly—

“These little ones are pleading with us to be made
clean, to be fed, and to be clothed.”

“And to be made angels!” answered Margery, softly,
with a divine look radiating from her clear eyes.

“You are right, Miss Winston—they ask to be made
angels, and we, as Christians, must answer their appeal.
Truly, we, who are educated and refined, and who trust to
be redeemed, have a mission confided to us, in behalf of
these unfortunates. I have been thinking that they illustrate
the parable of the talent which was given unto the
faithful steward. They are as priceless jewels, indeed,
placed in charge of Christians, and ought not to be hidden
in dust under the world's feet; for our Lord will require
usury for them at the last day. Look, Miss Winston!
does not yonder infant man plead with us that he may be
made useful?—does he not seem to ask that his limbs, his
heart, his soul, shall be placed at interest for his Lord?
In the name of his wretched class, in the name of Him

whose workmanship is degraded by his abasement, he
pleads that we, as stewards of the Lord Christ, shall not
leave him in the desert of the streets. Oh, Miss! would
not that shrivelled form and the shrunken soul it hides,
covered with dust on the Judgment Day, be a terrible
evidence of unfaithful stewardship, were our Master to say
to one of us, `Thou oughtest to have put my money to
the exchangers, and then, at my coming, I should have
received mine own with usury!”'

Margery was silent, but her expressive face responded
to Mr. Granby's words, as she proceeded in the task of
endeavoring to interest her untutored charge. In accomplishing
this, the new teacher found valuable auxilliaries
not only in her kind patron, but in Harry, and Fanny, and
Rob Morrison. The latter, indeed, appeared to give himself
entirely to the business—following Margaret's fingers,
as they traced letters on the black-board, or listening
eagerly to her explanations, with an interest that never
flagged a moment. The other children grew, little by
little, more accustomed to their novel position, and soon
vied with one another in answering quickly such simple
questions as the teacher asked; so that, in the course of
a few hours' session, Mr. Granby, with much satisfaction,
felt that the Tenant-House School was an accomplished
fact, and that Miss Winston was a teacher of whom he, as
“Committee-man,” might well be proud.

But it was still more satisfactory, at the close of the
first morning of tuition—after a brief prayer had fallen
upon the children's unaccustomed ears—to see the good
Samson, with smiles breaking over all his features, raise

the lid of a covered basket, which he had concealed till
then, and thence taking generous buttered cakes, of
Mrs. George's own preparation, distribute them equitably
among his ragged little clients, whose eyes danced with
hungry delight. And it was more affecting than all to
observe Margery weeping, as she sat holding Fanny and
Harry by the hand a moment, and watching the poor
little ones, as they awkwardly received their biscuits, and
then stooping down, as they crept, one by one, to her knee,
and kissing their thin faces, soiled and unhandsome as they
were—kissing them with a smile and tear, and bidding
them to be good, and come regularly to school.

“God bless you!” said Mr. Granby, warmly, after the
children had quietly left the room, and then broken wildly
down the stairs, eager to disperse to their separate domiciles,
to tell parents, or such other poor protectors as they
owned, the story of their new adventure. “God bless
you, Miss Winston!”

“Dat he will—an' yourse'f, too, massa!” cried Samson,
who held one handle of his basket, while Rob Morrison
grasped the other.

Then, shaking Margery by the hand, the old gentleman,
followed by his servant, descended to the front door of
Kolephat College, but found his progress suddenly arrested
by a throng of tenants who stood around the threshold,
blocking up the narrow alley-way. These people seemed
to be much excited, and were talking in a variety of
idioms, among which the Irish brogue was most distinguishable.

“Bless me, Samson! what is the matter?” ejaculated

Mr. Granby, as he saw the crowd before him, which the
negro was endeavoring to penetrate.

“Sure, it's a dead woman,” answered a stout, broad-featured
Irishwoman, who stood directly in the entrance,
her naked arms blue from cold, and dripping, at the same
time, with soap-suds. “Sure, it's that poor crathur,
Mrs. Keeley, that's kilt an' murthered by the ould thafe
o' the wor-r-ld, Ferret, bad cess to him.”

“Murdered? what is that?—a woman murdered?”
exclaimed Mr. Granby, greatly shocked. “Where are the
police?”

“Sure, an' if it's not murthered, what is it?” cried the
Hibernian female. “The black-hearted ould villyan tuk
the poor sowl's bed from undher her, and” —

“Where is she, my good woman—this person of whom
you speak?”

“Is it her ye mane? Down there!—in the cellar!”
answered the tenant, pointing to an opening, near the
door, which was the entrance to certain subterranean
depths, used formerly for the stabling of horses, but now
as dwelling-places for the poorest of those wretched ones
who swarmed about the dismal neighborhood. Mr. Granby
found that the crowd made way for him, as, followed by
Samson, he moved towards the cellar-mouth, beneath
which were several decayed and water-soaked wooden
steps, descending to a darkness like that of night. The
old gentleman paused, for it scarcely seemed to him that
a human being could exist in such a place as this appeared
to be; but he heard, at this moment, a sound as of voices
below, and Samson said—

“Massa Granby, please!—I'll go down dere fust.”

So saying, the negro, leaving Rob Morrison in charge
of the basket, bent his stalwart frame, and, stooping
under the low cross-piece, let himself down to the damp
and chilly abode, into which but a few day-beams struggled,
scarcely discovering the figures of two or three men
and women, who stood in the middle of the clay floor,
looking solemnly upon a woman, who lay outstretched,
with head thrown back, and eyes set in the last stare of
death. There was not a particle of furniture in the cellar,
and scarcely rags enough upon the corpse to cover nakedness.
A few feet from the spot where it was extended,
appeared a hillock of discolored snow, frozen hard, the
remains of a heap that had gathered just under the single
narrow window, level with the ground above, through
which it had drifted during the previous week's storm.
All the rest of the floor was hard clay, save in a depression
near one corner, where a pool of dirty water had
congealed to ice. But the most melancholy spectacle of
all was the form of a child, lying prone over the dead
woman's body, its small face pressed against the breast,
its skeleton arms clasped about the neck. The negro, as
he entered, and, after remaining a moment, became able
to distinguish objects, shuddered, and gave utterance to
an exclamation of horror.

Oh! Samson, it is exceedingly dark,” said Mr. Granby,
who was just behind him.

“Look! look at dat, massa!” responded the negro,
directing the old gentleman's gaze to the object at their
feet. Mr. Granby did look, and, like his servant, seemed

transfixed in dread surprise. But before either of them
could make any further inquiries concerning what they
saw, a shout arose above in the alley-way, and the next
moment a man precipitated himself down the broken steps,
and dashed into the cellar, a dozen of the tenants following
closely. As the crowd entered, the darkness became for a
moment opaque, and it was a minute before Mr. Granby
was again enabled to discern aught near him. Then he
heard a wild cry, and saw another form lying loose beside
the dead woman.

“It's Keeley,” said the voice of the Irish laundress,
who was among those who had entered. “It's the poor
body's husband!”

It was, indeed, the wretched Keeley, whom we last
encountered in the beer-shop, calling for fiery draughts of
brandy, to feed the unnatural thirst which consumed him,
while his deserted wife was starving in the garret of
Kolephat College. Driven to and fro by the demon of
his appetite, the drunkard had wandered, during a week
past, from grocery to bar-room, from one degraded resort
to another, squandering the gold which he had stolen from
Mallory, until at length, in his stupor, he had staggered
near the cellar, and heard a single word that sobered him
at once. And now, with fingers clutching his hair, and
froth gathered upon his lip, he lay beside the corpse of
his wife, and howled in the agony of unavailing remorse.

Then Mr. Granby heard, from the lips of those who
stood irresolutely around, how the agent of the tenant-house,
in the “strict” discharge of his duty, had evicted
the woman from the miserable garret in which she was

dying; how she had been dragged away, with her child,
and then returned, and crawled into this horrible cellar,
and there lay down and died; how, finally, the screams
of the orphan Moll had made known the fact to tenants
above, and —

Mr. Granby desired to listen no longer; for the rest
was revealed at his feet. He gave orders to Samson to
remain, and make such dispositions as were needful for
the immediate relief of the child, while he himself hurriedly
left the cellar, accompanied by Rob Morrison, whose
hand he grasped tightly. But when he had proceeded a
little way, he heard a sob at his side, and observed that
the Weasel was weeping, though, when noticed, the boy
brushed his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, and turned
away his head.

“Rob—Robert, my boy, what is the matter?” asked
Mr. Granby, pausing in his walk. But the Weasel only
sobbed the more.

“It was a sad thing,” said Mr. Granby, supposing that
his protégé was thinking of the scene just witnessed.
Bob shook his head, and then murmured—

“Please, sir—Mr. Granby—don't be mad with me.”

“What, my boy?” asked the old gentleman, much
astonished at the boy's demeanor.

“'Cause—it made me cry. Folks all'ays said I was
born in a cellar, too—an' mother died—same way.” —

The poor boy stopped, and vainly strove to check his
grief.

“O Father in Heaven!” murmured Mr. Granby, to
himself, as he felt a tear upon his own eyelid. “What

misery is in this world! Come, Rob,” he continued, in a
hurried tone, “let us go home.”

“Please, sir, won't you take care o' that poor little
girl?” asked the Weasel, as if suddenly summoning courage,
and holding hard on Mr. Granby's hand. “She's a
orphan, too!”

“That will I—that will I!” answered the old gentleman,
and then drew Rob Morrison along, without saying
more.

But when, at Mr. Granby's knock, good Mrs. George
presented herself in the hall, she lifted her hands, in amazement,
at beholding her patron and his young companion,
with misty eyes and tear-drops rolling down their cheeks.

“They've been to that tenant-house school,” thought
the housekeeper to herself. Mrs. George judged aright;
but she knew not that another orphan had been discovered—that
another pupil for the tenant-house school
was left by Death at the door of Charity.

Another, indeed; for already had Samson, in his
thoughtfulness, coaxed the half-starved Moll away from
her mother's cold form—the more easily because the
wretched child shrank from the father who had been her
tyrant—and conveyed her to the apartment of Margaret,
whose kindness soon won the orphan's confidence. The
negro then, after learning that Keeley, nearly crazy from
the effects of his long debauch, had again reeled away
from the cellar, directed his steps homeward, to acquaint
his master with what he had done.

Meantime, the child Fanny, after leaving the school-room,
had been sent by the seamstress, with a bowl of tea,

to the room of Mallory the Miser, who lay in his bed,
propped upon the pillow, that had been smoothed as
usual in the morning by Margaret's kind hands. On a
round wooden stand near him stood a broken tumbler,
half filled with water, and containing also the few withered
flowers which Fanny had obtained from Emily Marvin, as
a gift to the forlorn miser. The old man's eyes wandering
constantly, still returned to rest upon those faded emblems
of sweetness and beauty, and evermore his thin lips
moved, murmuring broken soliloquies.

“'Tis good she is—the little child! to come to an ould
man like me! It's not for my money she comes, anyhow,
I'll go bail. I'd like, if I could afford, to give her—a bit
of silver; but I'm too poor—I'm too poor!”

Thus babbled the aged miser to himself, as he watched
a single cold gleam of sunshine that penetrated the casement,
and sometimes trembled on the flowers in the broken
glass. Presently, he listened intently, for a light step was
at the door, and a moment afterwards, Fanny stole noiselessly
in, and crept to the bed-side.

“Please, sir, Miss Margery sent you this—it's real
nice!”

She presented, as she spoke, the tea, which Mallory
received with a grim smile, taking hold of Fanny's hand.

“You're a good child,” said he.

“Please, sir, Miss Margery is better than me,” answered
the girl. “Oh! I pray the Lord to make me as good as
she is.”

“The Lord—and what do you know about the Lord,
omadhaun?” asked Mallory, with a curious smile.

“You're mighty young, to be sp'akin' of prayers, I'm
thinkin'.”

Fanny looked wonderingly at the sinister face of her
questioner, and replied, seriously—

“The Lord Jesus was good, and gave me friends when
my mother died; and I want to pray to him all the time,
to thank him.”

These simple words were spoken in so earnest a tone
that Mallory remained silent, and an unusual feeling
seemed manifest in his features, as if a dim consciousness
of something wrong in his own nature were stirring in his
mind; but the next moment, he relinquished Fanny's
hand, and gave vent to a hard, dry laugh.

“Ye'd better go and pray, then, ye young saint,” he
said, sneeringly. “Maybe ye'll find a mare's nest. Good-bye
to ye. Take your teacup with you.”

Saying this, the miser handed Fanny the bowl, and
closed his eyes. The child lingered a moment, to arrnage
the bed-clothes, as she had seen Margaret do, and then
departed as quietly as she had come. Mallory, when he
was alone again, opened his eyes, and muttered an imprecation.
“Prayers!” he cried, nervously, turning on his
pillow. “It's prayers an' priestcraft that makes the
world as bad as it is. Bad luck to the” —

Mallory paused, for his glance fell upon the broken
tumbler, with its bunch of flowers, and the sunbeam glittering
on the glass, painting transparent hues in its passage
across the room. Queerly enough, as he looked, his
memory recalled a beautiful story that he had heard,
long ago, in his native land, of a poor idiot, or “innocent,”

as they called him, who, when a sunbeam fell
athwart his sight, as he knelt in church, cast his cloak
across it, thinking it palpable, and—the mantle hung
there, in mid-air, supported by the shining motes. Prayer
and Faith, so ran the legend, worked this miracle; for
Heaven would not disappoint the idiot's trust.

It was a strange thought to enter into Mallory's breast,
and he banished it, at once, and fiercely. Then, another
recollection beset him—of a story that had been rife
among the peasantry, when he was a boy, relating to a
rich man—an arrogant, sinful scoffer, a hater of his fellowmen,
and oppressor of the poor; whose life, indeed, was a
long scene of selfishness; and it chronicled how this man,
as he walked one day, beheld a miserable, mangy dog,
lying in the gutter, dying from starvation, yet too feeble
to move from the spot where he writhed; and how the
proud sinner, as in mere wantonness, kicked a bone that
lay in his path towards the perishing cur, and then went,
unthinkingly, on his way; and how the man died, and
went to doom—condemned to ever-during torment; but,
wonderful to tell, the foot which had kicked the bone
to a helpless dog, did not suffer, like the rest of his
body, in endless fire, but was thrust out of the flame
unscathed, because that limb alone had been the instrument
of the one good deed which the sinner had performed
in his earthly life.

Mallory, as he reflected, began to shudder, and a cold
sweat broke from his yellow face. He struggled to divest
himself of thought—of memory. He started up in his
bed, gazing anxiously about him; then crept from beneath

the clothes, and stole to the wooden stand, and put away
the broken glass, with its flowers, to a corner where they
could not meet his gaze. Then he placed the bar against
his door, and crawled back to his pillow. It was a sad
spectacle! that old man shuffling over the floor, listening
at the door, crouching at the hearth, where lay concealed
his hoarded gold, and finally, shivering back to his pallet,
lifting his pillow, and drawing from beneath a few silver
coins, wherewith to glut his eyes with the white leprosy
that had made him an incarnation of grovelling avarice.

Presently, while yet the miser gazed at the money, a
sense of weariness came over him, and his feeble frame
sank into slumber, its withered arms dropping on the bedside,
its lean fingers still clutching the pieces of coin.
Then, as he slept, the sunbeams stole nearer to him, and
fine particles of perfume were liberated from the faded
flowers, and followed the shining rays; while, back, at
the corner of the room, and down in the fire-place, dark
shadows jostled together, grotesquely crowding each other,
to escape from the increasing light. Thus surrounded,
Mallory the miser began to dream.

Far away, up the bright hills of childhood, the old
man wandered in his slumber, becoming once more a
sunny-haired boy, with laughter in his heart and hopes
garlanded about his forehead; climbing a mother's knee,
and gambolling with a brother, fair and sinless as himself.
A smile illumined the sleeping dotard's features, as the
sunbeam of childhood stole through his dream.

Then the vision changed, and he stood, with his brother,
beside their mother's grave, and wrung his companion's

hand, as they parted—one orphan to go to the far land of
India, the other (himself) to remain at the old home;
and here, the sunbeam began to flicker, and the smile
faded from Mallory's sleeping face.

Another change in his dream: The brother had returned
from India with a small fortune, the fruit of toil
and thrift, and bringing with him a young daughter, the
love-pledge of a lost wife; returned, with an incurable
disease, to die in his native land, leaving the child to her
uncle's care, as guardian of the patrimony which was to
be hers in the future. At this stage of the old man's
dreaming memories, there was a frown, instead of a smile,
upon his sharp lineaments, and the crooked shadows that
had been crouching in corners, glided thickly up to the
bed, scaring away the sunbeams from Mallory's pillow.
The miser's lips cleaved together, and drops of perspiration
hung upon his brow. Ah! miserable dream! he
beheld, through the misty past, the parting look of his
dying brother, heard the broken accents of that brother's
voice, committing a sacred charge to his hands; and then
he remembered how he had broken the trust; how he had
seized, by fraud, the orphan's fortune, and reared her as a
dependent upon his bounty, until, at last, she had fled
away from his inhospitable roof, with a stranger who had
won her love—her fate thenceforth remaining a mystery;
how he, the forsworn brother and fraudulent guardian,
had thenceforth become a slave to gold, and had known
no love in the world, and had sunk, lower and lower, in
self-imposed misery, till he had become—Mallory the
Miser of Kolephat College!

This was the miser's dream; and he awoke from it with
his heart like ice in his withered bosom, but with brain
burning as a flame—awoke, and leaped wildly from his
bed, grappling with air, and clutching his pillow in frenzy.
The shadows were all about his bed; the sunbeams had
shrunk away to the cold casement, leaving that wretched
old man with only nightmare shapes at his side. His blue
lips quivered, his teeth chattered, and he spread out his
talon-fingers, as if to exercise the memories of the past.

“Ah—ha!” he gasped; “my brother's child! my
brother's child! where is she?”

“Dead!” echoed from his icy heart. “Dead! dead!”
murmured the miser. “My brother! my mother's boy!
my brother's child! I wronged them! Oh! villain that
I am!”

He swayed to and fro, the red gleam in his eyes, which
rolled incessantly in their sockets.

“Gold!—money!—that did it all—that hardened my
heart agi'n the child of my mother's son! O cursed
money—it ates my soul!”

The miser's eyes, wandering wildly, fell upon the coins
of silver that had fallen from his relaxed fingers, during
sleep, and now lay scattered on the bed-cover, as if mocking
him with their glitter. He gazed at them, gnashing
his teeth; his lips moved, as though to curse them; then,
with a quick grasp, he gathered the pieces together, held
them aloft a moment in his extended hand, and dashed
them down upon the floor.

They fell and rolled away, like demons fleeing from a
repentant heart. The old man listened to their clatter, a

smile breaking over his grim face. In that moment, the
evil spirit went out from him; a weight slid from his
breast; he sat up, once more, upon his humble couch—no
longer the writhing miser, but clothed, and in his right
mind. He raised his long fingers to his eyes, and felt that
tears were there—blessed tears, such as he had not shed
since boyhood; for the waters of a soul were stirred,
and welled up through the desert of life-time selfishness.
Mallory the Miser wept like a young child.

As he thus sat, the door was opened softly, and Margaret
came in, with Fanny; and there glinted also through
the casement a new ray of sunlight; and the withered
flowrets gave forth a fresh perfume. She paused, on
seeing tears upon the old man's cheeks; but Mallory
beckoned with his shrunken hand, and said to Fanny—

“The posies! the posies, my child.”

The little one took the flowers to him, and he pressed
them to his withered mouth, and then said, in a tone that
was quite unlike his usual harsh accents:

“Say your prayers, darlint—I want to hear them!”

Oh! the music of that child's untaught orison, as it
rose tremblingly from her lips, when she had kneeled
down by the pallet side! Ah! the radiant wonder, and
beautiful sympathy that shone upon the face of the seamstress,
as she knelt, also, and joined in the ovation! A
miracle had been worked in that dim room of the tenant-house—a
miracle of love, and faith, and charity.

When the orphan ceased, Mallory clasped her hand,
and Margaret saw that no longer a red gleam was in his
eyes, but, instead, a look of quiet and sadness. But as

Fanny had risen, and he looked down upon her gentle
face, a faded ribbon that she wore about her neck became
loosened, and a small locket-case attached to it dropped
upon the bed. It was the miniature of her mother—sole
relic of the poor woman who had died, unknown and
friendless, in the room below—and which, from that hour
when the sympathizing policeman had restored it to her,
the poor child had hidden close to her heart. The likeness
lying uppermost, as it fell, its lineaments attraced
Mallory's glance; he grasped it nervously—his gaze became
riveted at once—grew steadfast for the space of a
minute—and then, with a gasping cry, he exclaimed—

“This—this picture!—where got ye it?”

“It's my mother's likeness!” said Fanny, tears gushing
from her eyes, as she answered.

Mallory remained for a time silent, his regards wandering
from the portrait to the orphan, his hands shaking,
his lips parted, and tremulously agitated. Then he bent
down, and cast his long arms about the child's neck, and
leaned his head upon her forehead, clasping her closely,
kissing her convulsively.

“You're my child,” he murmured, hurriedly. “You're
her baby—her baby!”

It was strange to behold that old man, shaking as with
palsy, and straining to his withered breast the weeping
infant; strange to hear the muttered interjections that
he uttered. Margaret looked on in silence till he became
calmer, and then, taking one of Mallory's hands,
and winding her arm around the orphan's waist, she stood
by the bedside, and listened to a strange history of wrong

and remorse and retribution—a recital of events such as
were hinted at in the changing shadows of the miser's
dream—discovering to her apprehension, at last, that
Fanny was the grandchild of the miserable but now
repentant man before her. In return, Mallory, with
bowed head, heard of the fate of his brother's daughter,
perishing neglected and alone, within sound of his voice,
while he, wretched one, watched and hearded his ill-gotten
wealth, in squalor and darkness.

“You shall have it, avick!—all! it's for you, now!
Sure it was hers, and no luck ever come to me with it.”

The miser bent his body, swaying his head to and fro,
as remorse stirred in his heart. But Fanny put her hand
to his grey beard, and said softly—

“Please, let Miss Margery say her good prayers.”

And Margery prayed, fervently and long, whilst Mallory
hearkened and was soothed; but when the seamstress
rose to go, he would not suffer the child to accompany
her, but held the little one's hand, drawing her near—
very near to his heart.