dignity and emoluments of the memorable crossing. From that hour he felt
himself fulfilling his proper destiny. But poor Becky, alas! had already
fallen into the sere and yellow leaf; with her decline, her good
qualities were impaired. She took to drinking,--not to positive
intoxication, but to making herself "comfortable;" and, to satisfy her
craving, Beck, waking betimes one morning, saw her emptying his pockets.
Then he resolved, quietly and without upbraiding her, to remove to a
safer lodging. To save had become the imperative necessity of his
existence. But to do him justice, Beck had a glimmering sense of what
was due to the "h-old crittur." Every Saturday evening he called at her
house and deposited with her a certain sum, not large even in proportion
to his earnings, but which seemed to the poor ignorant miser, who grudged
every farthing to himself, an enormous deduction from his total, and a
sum sufficient for every possible want of humankind, even to satiety.
And now, in returning, despoiled of all save the few pence he had
collected that day, it is but fair to him to add that not his least
bitter pang was in the remembrance that this was the only Saturday on
which, for the first time, the weekly stipend would fail.

But so ill and so wretched did he look when he reached her little room
that "mammy" forgot all thought of herself; and when he had told his
tale, so kind was her comforting, so unselfish her sympathy, that his
heart smote him for his old parsimony, for his hard resentment at her
single act of peculation. Had not she the right to all he made? But
remorse and grief alike soon vanished in the fever that now seized him;
for several days he was insensible; and when he recovered sufficiently to
be made aware of what was around him, he saw the widow seated beside him,
within four bare walls. Everything, except the bed he slept on, had been
sold to support him in his illness. As soon as he could totter forth,
Beck hastened to his crossing. Alas! it was preoccupied. His absence