crumbling tiles, which fell one after the other, with a crashing noise,
on the pavement below. Dummie started in affright; and perhaps his
conscience smote him for the trick he had played with regard to the false
Bible. But the woman, whose excited and unstrung nerves led her astray
from one subject to another with preternatural celerity, said, with an
hysterical laugh, "See, Dummie, they come in state for me; give me the
cap--yonder--and bring the looking-glass!"

Dummie obeyed; and the woman, as she in a low tone uttered something
about the unbecoming colour of the ribbons, adjusted the cap on her head,
and then, saying in a regretful and petulant voice, "Why should they have
cut off my hair? Such a disfigurement!" bade Dummie desire Mrs. Margery
once more to ascend to her.

Left alone with her child, the face of the wretched mother softened as
she regarded him, and all the levities and all the vehemences--if we may
use the word--which, in the turbulent commotion of her delirium, had been
stirred upward to the surface of her mind, gradually now sank as death
increased upon her, and a mother's anxiety rose to the natural level from
which it had been disturbed and abased. She took the child to her bosom,
and clasping him in her arms, which grew weaker with every instant, she
soothed him with the sort of chant which nurses sing over their untoward
infants; but her voice was cracked and hollow, and as she felt it was so,
the mother's eyes filled with tears. Mrs. Margery now reentered; and
turning towards the hostess with an impressive calmness of manner which
astonished and awed the person she addressed, the dying woman pointed to
the child and said,--

"You have been kind to me, very kind, and may God bless you for it! I
have found that those whom the world calls the worst are often the most