shows but a faint colour of either leaves or blossom.

Perhaps the pale woman standing by the door of a small shop, the shutters of which were not yet taken down, was a fair specimen of her neighbours. She was tall, but drooped so much that her real height was lost. She had a sad face, where lines of care and anxiety had made a network perhaps earlier in life than wrinkles had any right to appear, if they should be traced by time rather than by sorrow. For Patience Harrison was not an old woman, and had scarcely entered her thirty-sixth year.

As she stood at the narrow entry of the shop, her hands folded, her head bent forward, she might well attract any passer-by, while she looked right and left, as if in hopes of seeing a well-known figure come into the row, from either end.

Up and down, up and down, that eager, hungry glance, with an infinite pathos in the dark eyes, scanned the narrow passage; and grew more pathetic and more hungry every moment.

At last footsteps were heard on the pavement. Patience started, and took a step forward, only to draw back again disappointed.

"The top of the morning to you, Mrs. Harrison. You are about early. It is as fine a summer morning as I ever was out in."

The speaker was a tall, well-knit young man of two or three and thirty, with a fine open countenance, and a broad square brow, round which thick light curls clustered. No contrast could be greater than between Patience Harrison and George Paterson: the man so full of life, and the enjoyment of life; the woman so languid and weary-looking. He seemed as if the world were a pleasant place to him, she as if it were a waste and a wilderness.

"You are up and about early," George repeated. "Indeed, you look as if you hadn't been to bed. I hope you haven't been up all night. Have you, now?"

"Yes. How could I sleep? How could I rest? There was a worse storm than ever last night at supper-time, and—and—Jack ran away out of the house, and has never come back."

"The young rascal!" George exclaimed. "I'd like to thrash him!"

"Oh, don't say so! Don't say so! If ever a boy is scourged by a tongue, Jack is. I mean to leave this house; I can't—I can't bear it any longer."

"Well," George said, his eyes shining with a bright light—the light of hope—"well, there's a home ready for you, you know that. The sooner you come, the better."

"You know I can't do it. Why do you ask me? I wonder you should ask me."

"I see no wonder in it," was the answer. "You've watched and waited for eleven years; sure that's long enough! He will never come back."

"Yes," she said sadly; "yes. I have waited and watched, as you say. It is the business of my life. I shall watch and wait to the end."

George Paterson gave an impatient gesture, and settled the workman's basket on his broad shoulders, as if he were going to walk on. But after a pace or two he seemed to change his mind, and stopping, he said—

"But what about Jack? How did it happen?"

"He offended her yesterday. He brought dirty boots into the parlour; and he blew a tune on the little cornet you gave him, when she told him to be quiet. He upset a jug of water on the table, and he made a face at her, and he called her 'an old cat.' He had no business to call her names."

George laughed.

"A very fitting name, I think; he has felt her claws often enough. Well, what then?"

"Then she boxed his ears—it was at supper—and he flew into a rage, and he would not listen to me, but tore out of the room, out of the house, and has never come back. Oh, George, what if there should be two to wait and watch for, instead of one! Jack! Jack! How could he leave me?"

"He can't have gone far; and, as to being out all night, why, that won't hurt him. The young rascal, to give you all this trouble! Yes, I'll go and hunt for him; and if I catch him, won't I give it to him!"

"No, George; no. Remember his provocation. Remember he has had no father, only a mother like me to control him."

"Only a mother like you! I should like to know where a better could be found! I am sorry for the boy that he has had to live with a cross-grained old maid, but for your sake he ought to have put up with it."

"She means well. She took us in for my father's sake, and she has kept me and the boy from starving."

"You have earned your living; you have worked well for her, and she knows it. But I will go and hunt for Master Jack. See! I will leave my basket of tools here as an assurance that I am coming back. You go and lie down, and I'll have the young master back before an hour is over. Come, go indoors; you look ready to drop."

But Patience shook her head.

"I am used to waiting and watching," she said again; "it's nothing new."

Then her eyes began their search up and down the row, with the same wistful, eager gaze.

George Paterson had put the basket of tools just within the doorway, and turning to her said—

"Look up at that strip of blue sky, Patience; look up, not downward so much."

As he spoke he raised his head, and pointed to the narrow bit of sky which made a deeply blue line above the tops of the tall houses.

"That tells of love," he said—"God's love which is over us. Take heart, and lift it up to Him in your trouble."

George spoke out of the fulness of his own heart: not in any way as if he set himself up to lecture his listener, but just simply to try to raise her thoughts from the gnawing anxiety which had laid hold on her.

"Yes," she said, "the bit of sky is beautiful, but it is so far off; and—don't be angry with me, George, but I wish you would go and find him. Let me come with you!" she exclaimed.

"No, no; I shall be quicker than you are. I can get over the ground in half the time."

Neither asked the other where George would look for the truant. Both had one thought—Jack had been to the quay, and was perhaps on board one of the ships lying there. He had threatened before that he would go to sea, and leave Miss Pinckney and her scoldings and fault-findings behind him.

"If it had not been for his mother he would have done so long ago," he said. "He loved the sea, and he wished to be a sailor, as his father had been before him."

As George's quick, firm steps were heard dying away in the distance, Mrs. Harrison pulled a stool towards her out of the shop, and seated herself just within the doorway.

She was scarcely conscious of anything but the fear, growing greater every moment, that Jack—the sunshine of her life, the light of her eyes—had gone from her. She leaned her head against the door, and looked up at the sky half unconsciously. As she looked, a blind in one of the windows of the opposite house was lifted, and the window cautiously opened, while a head with a tangle of golden hair was thrust out, and a little voice—clear, like the sound of a thrush in a tree—sang in sweet dulcet tones some verses of a childish morning hymn:—

"Now the eastern sky is red,
I, too, lift my little head;
Now the lark sings loud and gay,
I, too, rise to praise and pray.

"Saviour, to Thy cottage home
Once the daylight used to come:
Thou hast often seen it break
Brightly o'er the Eastern lake.

"Blessed Jesus! Thou dost know
What of danger, joy, or woe,
Shall to-day my portion he—
Let me meet it all in Thee."

Here the sweet, clear voice broke off suddenly, for the child saw that her opposite neighbour on the doorstep was looking up at her.

"Mrs. Harrison," she said, nodding and kissing her hand. "I see you! I'm coming down when I'm dressed. Uncle Bobo isn't awake yet."

Then the head disappeared, and there was silence for a few minutes.

Presently the bolts of the opposite door were gently drawn, and out came the daintiest little figure, in a fresh blue cotton frock and white pinafore, her rosy lips parted with a smile, and her