"Perhaps Elbridge has returned." This thought made him stop again.
"He must have understood me that I would be around."

Just at this moment the crying of a child was heard.

"Is that Ella?" Wilkinson walked around a little way, until he came
nearly opposite his own house. Then he stopped to listen more
attentively.

Yes. It was the grieving cry of his own sick babe.

"Poor child!" he murmured. "I wonder what can ail her?"

He looked up at the chamber windows. The curtains were drawn aside,
and he saw upon the ceiling of the room the shadow of some one
moving to and fro. He did not doubt that it was the shadow of his
wife, as, with their sick babe in her arms, she walked to and fro in
the effort to soothe it again to sleep. Had there been a doubt, it
would have been quickly dispelled, for there came to his ears the
soft tones of a voice he knew full well--came in tones of music, low
and soothing, but with most touching sweetness. It was the voice of
his wife, and she sang the air of the cradle-hymn with which he had
been soothed to rest when he lay an innocent babe in his mother's
arms.

The feelings of Wilkinson, a good deal excited by the struggle
between affection and duty on the one side, and appetite and
inclination on the other, were touched and softened by the incident,
and he was about entering his house when the approaching form of a