beneficent smile of the white-robed Madonna seemed to whisper
comfort. A long gust of chill air swept up the aisles, and Miss
Sophie shivered not from cold, but from nervousness.

But darkness was falling, and soon the lights would be lowered,
and the great massive doors would be closed; so, gathering her
thin little cape about her frail shoulders, Miss Sophie hurried
out, and along the brilliant noisy streets home.

It was a wretched, lonely little room, where the cracks let the
boisterous wind whistle through, and the smoky, grimy walls
looked cheerless and unhomelike. A miserable little room in a
miserable little cottage in one of the squalid streets of the
Third District that nature and the city fathers seemed to have
forgotten.

As bare and comfortless as the room was Miss Sophie's life. She
rented these four walls from an unkempt little Creole woman,
whose progeny seemed like the promised offspring of Abraham. She
scarcely kept the flickering life in her pale little body by the
unceasing toil of a pair of bony hands, stitching, stitching,
ceaselessly, wearingly, on the bands and pockets of trousers. It
was her bread, this monotonous, unending work; and though whole
days and nights constant labour brought but the most meagre
recompense, it was her only hope of life.

She sat before the little charcoal brazier and warmed her
transparent, needle-pricked fingers, thinking meanwhile of the
strange events of the day. She had been up town to carry the
great, black bundle of coarse pants and vests to the factory and