curiosity, and afterwards excited our interest.

They were a young lad of eighteen or nineteen, and his mother, a
lady of about fifty, or it might be less. The mother wore a
widow's weeds, and the boy was also clothed in deep mourning. They
were poor--very poor; for their only means of support arose from
the pittance the boy earned, by copying writings, and translating
for booksellers.

They had removed from some country place and settled in London;
partly because it afforded better chances of employment for the
boy, and partly, perhaps, with the natural desire to leave a place
where they had been in better circumstances, and where their
poverty was known. They were proud under their reverses, and above
revealing their wants and privations to strangers. How bitter
those privations were, and how hard the boy worked to remove them,
no one ever knew but themselves. Night after night, two, three,
four hours after midnight, could we hear the occasional raking up
of the scanty fire, or the hollow and half-stifled cough, which
indicated his being still at work; and day after day, could we see
more plainly that nature had set that unearthly light in his
plaintive face, which is the beacon of her worst disease.

Actuated, we hope, by a higher feeling than mere curiosity, we
contrived to establish, first an acquaintance, and then a close
intimacy, with the poor strangers. Our worst fears were realised;
the boy was sinking fast. Through a part of the winter, and the
whole of the following spring and summer, his labours were
unceasingly prolonged: and the mother attempted to procure needle-
work, embroidery--anything for bread.