wept our path along:Come, let us sing of Jesus,
The tempted, and the strong."
Such a warm, happy flush lightened in Charley's heart at that! She did not know why; but her fear was gone. The baby, too, a white, pure little thing, was lying in the cradle, cooing softly to itself. The mother—instinct is nearest the surface in a loving woman; the girl went up quickly to it, and touched its cheek, with a smile: she could not help it.
"It's so pretty!" she said.
Jinny's eyes glowed.
"I think so," she said, simply. "It's my baby. Did you want me?"
Lot remembered then. She drew back, her face livid and grave.
"Yes. Do you know me? I'm Lot Tyndal. Don't jerk your baby back! Don't! I'll not touch it. I want to get some honest work. I've a little brother."
There was a dead silence. Jinny's brain, I told you, was narrow, her natural heart not generous or large in its impulse; the kind of religion she learned did not provide for anomalies of work like this. (So near at hand, you know. Lot was neither a Sioux nor a Rebel.)
"I'm Lot,"—desperately. "You know what I am. I want you to take us in, stop the boys from hooting at me on the streets, make a decent Christian woman out of me. There's plain words. Will you do it? I'll work for you. I'll nurse the baby, the dear little baby."
Jinny held her child tighter to her breast, looking at the vile clothes of the wretch, the black marks which years of crime had left on her face. Don't blame Jinny. Her baby was God's gift to her: she thought of that, you know. She did not know those plain, coarse words were the last cry for help from a drowning soul, going down into depths whereof no voice has come back to tell the tale. Only Jesus. Do you know what message He carried to those "spirits in prison"?
"I daren't do it. What would they say of me?" she faltered.
Lot did not speak. After a while she motioned to the shop. Adam was there. His wife went for him, taking the baby with her. Charley saw that, though everything looked dim to her; when Adam came in, she knew, too, that his face was angry and dark.
"It's Christmas eve," she said.
She tried to say more, but could not.
"You must go from here!" speaking sharp, hissing. "I've no faith in the whinin' cant of such as you. Go out, Janet. This is no place for you or the child."
He opened the street-door for Lot to go out. He had no faith in her. No shrewd, common-sense man would have had. Besides, this was his Christmas night: the beginning of his new life, when he was coming near to Christ in his happy home and great love. Was this foul worm of the gutter to crawl in and tarnish it all?
She stopped one instant on the threshold. Within was a home, a chance for heaven; out yonder in the night—what?
"You will put me out?" she said.
"I know your like. There's no help for such as you"; and he closed the door.
She sat down on the curb-stone. It was snowing hard. For about an hour she was there, perfectly quiet. The snow lay in warm, fleecy drifts about her: when it fell on her arm, she shook it off: it was so pure and clean, and she——She could have torn her flesh from the bones, it seemed so foul to her that night. Poor Charley! If she had only known how God loved something within her, purer than the snow, which no foulness of flesh or circumstance could defile! Would you have told her, if you had been there? She only muttered, "Never," to herself now and then, "Never."
A little boy came along presently, carrying a loaf of bread under his arm,—a manly, gentle little fellow. She let Benny play with him sometimes.
"Why, Lot!" he said. "I'll walk part of the way home with you. I'm afraid."
She got up and took him by the hand. She could hardly speak. Tired, worn-out in body and soul; her feet had been passing for years through water colder than the river of death: but it was nearly over now.
"It's better for Benny it should end this way," she said.
She knew how it would end.
"Rob," she said, when the boy turned to go to his own home, "you know Adam Craig? I want you to bring him to my room early to-morrow morning,—by dawn. Tell him he'll find his sister Nelly's child there: and never to tell that child that his 'Charley' was Lot Tyndal. You'll remember, Rob?"
"I will. Happy Christmas, Charley!"
She waited a minute, her foot on the steps leading to her room.
"Rob!" she called, weakly, "when you play with Ben, I wish you'd call me Charley to him, and never—that other name."
"I'll mind," the child said, looking wistfully at her.
She was alone now. How long and steep the stairs were! She crawled up slowly. At the top she took a lump of something brown from her pocket, looked at it long and steadily. Then she glanced upward.
"It's the only way to keep Benny from knowing," she said. She ate it, nearly all, then looked around, below her, with a strange intentness, as one who says good-bye. The bell tolled the hour. Unutterable pain was in its voice,—may-be dumb spirits like Lot's crying aloud to God.
"One hour nearer Christmas," said Adam Craig, uneasily. "Christ's coming would have more meaning, Janet, if this were a better world. If it wasn't for these social necessities that"–
He stopped. Jinny did not answer.
Lot went into her room, roused Ben with a kiss. "His last remembrance of me shall be good and pleasant," she said. She took him on her lap, untying his shoes.
"My baby has been hunting eggs to-day in Rob's stable," shaking the hay from his stockings.
"Why, Charley! how could you know?" with wide eyes.
"So many things I know! Oh, Charley's wise! To-morrow, Bud will go see new friends,—such kind friends! Charley knows. A baby, Ben. My boy will like that: he's a big giant beside that baby. Ben can hold it, and touch it, and kiss it."
She looked at his pure hands with hungry eyes.
"Go on. What else but the baby?"
"Kind friends for Ben, better and kinder than Charley."
"That's not true. Where are you going, Charley? I hate the kind friends. I'll stay with you,"—beginning to cry.
Her eyes sparkled, and she laughed childishly.
"Only a little way, Bud, I'm going. You watch for me,—all the time you watch for me. Some day you and I'll go out to the country, and be good children together."
What dawning of a new hope was this? She did not feel as if she lied. Some day,—it might be true. Yet the vague gleam died out of her heart, and when Ben, in his white night-gown, knelt down to say the prayer his mother had taught him, it was "Devil Lot's" dead, crime-marked face that bent over him.
"God bless Charley!" he said.
She heard that. She put him into the bed, then quietly bathed herself, filled his stocking with the candies she had bought, and lay down beside him,—her limbs growing weaker, but her brain more lifeful, vivid,
