cruelly wounded. She had forgotten the reserve which respect for her
husband's opinions always enforced. "It is wicked to have said such a
thing!" she thought, as she walked rapidly along over the creaking snow.
"I will tell her it is not true,--it never could be true."

The path through the ragged, unkempt garden in front of the tenement
house was so trodden that the snow was packed and hard. The gate swung
back with a jar and clatter, and two limp frosted hens flew shrieking out
from the shelter of the ash-heap behind it. The door was open, and Helen
could see the square of the entry, papered, where the plaster had not
been broken away, with pale green castles embowered in livid trees. On
either side was the entrance to a tenement; a sagging nail in one of the
door-posts held a coat and a singed and battered hat. Here Helen knocked.

Mrs. Davis was in the small inner room, but came out as her visitor
entered, wiping the soapsuds from her bare arms on her dingy gingham
apron. On the other side of the room, opposite the door, was that awful
Presence, which silenced even the voices of the children.

"I'm washing," the woman said, as she gave her hand to Helen. "It is
Tom's best shirt,--fer to-morrow."

Helen took the hand, wrinkled and bleached with the work it had done, and
stroked it gently; she did not know what to say. This was not the grief
she had thought of,--a woman working calmly at her wash-tub, while her
husband lay dead in the next room. Helen could see the tub, with the mist
of steam about it, and the wash-board, and the bar of yellow soap.

She followed Mrs. Davis back to her work, and sat down on a bench, out of
the way of a little stream of water which had dripped from the leaking