They were heavy steps which the three listening children heard at last in the hall below, and upon the staircase the sounds of carrying a helpless burden up the stairs, and Jane and Winny pressed closer to Jessica, who looked from one to the other with an air of tender encouragement. As the sounds drew near, they crept by one impulse to the door, and opening it a little way they saw their father’s face as he was carried past them, pale but peaceful, with the eyelids closed as if he were in a deep sleep. Jessica’s quick eyes detected Daniel standing in the darkness at the end of the passage, and as soon as the sad procession had passed into the minister’s chamber, and the door was shut, she darted out and led him eagerly to the study. “Oh, Standring!” cried Jane and Winny in one breath, “tell us everything about papa.”

“Come, come, you needn’t be frightened, my little ladies,” answered Daniel soothingly. “Please God, your papa will be all right again in a week or two. The doctors say he’s been studying too much to make his grand sermons, and he hasn’t given his brain rest enough. But he’ll come all right again by and by, or I don’t know whatever will become of the chapel.”

“He won’t die?” murmured Jane, with quivering lips.

“Die!—oh, no!” said Daniel. “Why, my dears, you’re all of a tremble. It would be the best for you to go to bed, for you can’t do any good sitting up.”

“Standring,” said Winny, “I wish you’d let Jessica stay all night with us. She could sleep with nurse; and our room is inside nurse’s, and if we leave the door open we could talk to one another.” “She may stay and welcome, if nurse likes, Miss Winny,” answered Daniel; and as the nurse was anxious for her children to feel their new sorrow as lightly as possible she was glad to grant their request.

So after a while it happened that Daniel was wending his way alone, through the fog and the damp of the streets, towards a little house in a quiet and respectable sort of court, where for the last three years he had dwelt with his adopted child. His mind had been fully occupied with the strange events of the night and the paralysis of his stricken master; but now that he was alone, and his thoughts were free to return to his own affairs, they suddenly recalled to him the minister’s last words to himself.

What could it be of importance that he had to say to him when the evening service was finished? His brain had been busy with guesses, in spite of his conscience, during the singing of the hymns, and even during the first prayer, when he stood at the chapel-door to arrest the entrance of any late comer until it should be ended. Something of importance, and now the minister could not reveal it to him!

He knew that at a private committee meeting, during the past week, a plan had been proposed for erecting a small residence close to the new chapel and schoolrooms, where the chapel-keeper might dwell; and it had been suggested that his salary should be raised to such a sum as would free him from the necessity of seeking any other employment. In fact, the care of the chapel would be work enough, for it was to be very large and magnificent; and already his duties filled up four clear days of the week.

Could it be to speak about this the minister had desired him to come into his vestry immediately after the congregation had departed? But it was not so much the minister’s business as that of the chief men belonging to the church. Could it be anything about Jessica? It did not seem very likely; yet the minister was very partial to Jessica, and always seemed pleased to see her about the vestry, and he was talking to her very kindly when Daniel went to fetch the pulpit books. It was a hard thing to pacify his awakened curiosity, and he supposed nobody could satisfy it but the minister himself. How long was the stroke likely to last?

Daniel was asking himself this question, which neither he nor any one else could answer, just as he reached the door of his dwelling. There was a dim light from a lamp at the entrance of the court, and there was the red gleam of his own fire shining upon the white window-blind within, so that he could distinguish pretty plainly the figure of a person, which looked more like a heap of rags, crouching upon his door-sill. A tattered coat was tied round the neck by the sleeves, and an old brimless hat was drawn over the back of the head; but the tangled hair, which hung in ragged locks over the face, was too long for a man’s; and as he stooped down to look more closely it was certainly a woman’s face which was turned towards him.

“Come, come,” he said, “you’ve no business here, you know; so you’d better get up and go home. You don’t belong to this place, and you’ve made a mistake coming here. This is my house.”

He had his key in his hand, ready to let himself in where the comfortable fire was waiting for him; but he could not open the door until the miserable creature had moved, and, though she raised herself a little, she did not get up on her feet.

“I don’t belong to any place,” she answered suddenly, yet fiercely; “and I haven’t made a mistake in coming here. You’re Daniel Standring, and I’m Jessica’s mother.”

Daniel reeled for a instant as if he had been struck by a very heavy blow. He had long ago ceased to trouble himself about Jessica’s mother, or to dread her reappearance; and the minister had assured him that, if she should ever return to claim her daughter, he would use all his influence to protect Jessica from her, as being an unfit person to have the training of a child. The woman was standing up now, but leaning her back against his door, snapping her fingers at him with her face stretched out, with a glare of angry defiance in her bright eyes which sparkled through the gloom.

“I’ve nearly had the door down,” she said, with a hoarse laugh, “till all your neighbors came out to see what was the matter; but I scared them in again. The police himself turned tail like a coward.” And she laughed again so loud that the quiet court seemed to ring with the sound, and a door or two was cautiously opened, and Daniel saw his neighbors peeping out; all of them decent people, who held him in respect as the chapel-keeper of so fashionable a chapel.

“I want my daughter,” she cried, in high, shrill notes; “my Jessica, my daughter. Where is she, you scoundrel?”

“Come, now, then,” answered Daniel, emboldened by the advance of two or three of the men, who came up to form a flank of defence or resistance, “this behavior won’t do. Jessica isn’t here; so you’d better take yourself off. I wouldn’t give her up to you if she was here; but she isn’t here, and there’s an end of it.”

The woman seated herself once more upon the sill and leaned her head against the door-post.

“If you go in, I go in,” she said, doggedly; “and if I stay out, you stay out. I want my Jessica.”

It was an embarrassing position for Daniel. He did not like to resort to force in order to enter his house, for several reasons. First, and chiefly, he was now too sincere a Christian to choose any violent or ungentle measures, but, besides this, the person before him was a woman, and the mother of Jessica; and he was himself in a softened mood, from the excitement and sorrow of the evening. He stretched out his arm and fitted the key into the lock, but before he turned it he looked as closely as he could through the gloom into the woman’s face.

“You’re not drunk, are you?” he said.

“Neither sup nor drop has passed my lips to-day,” she answered, with a groan of suffering.

“Well, well!—come in,” said Daniel; “and you too, Mr. Brookes, if you please. I’m not myself at all to-night; and it ’ud hearten me to have somebody to back me. Come in.”

He opened the door into a comfortable and neat room, where everything was arranged with scrupulous order; for he was an orderly man by nature and Jessica had already the thrifty habits of a housekeeper. The fire had been well raked over with small coals before he and Jessica started for chapel, and now it was a bank of glowing embers.

The woman tottered across to the hearth and flung herself into Daniel’s arm-chair. They could see now how wan and hollow her face was, with the cheeks fallen in and the burning eyes sunk deep into the head, while, as she stretched out her thin and yellow hands over the fire, the red gleam shone through them. The poor tatters she wore were limp and dank with fog, and the slippers into which her naked feet were thrust were worn out at the toes, so as to give free inlet to the mud of the pavement.

Daniel regarded her in silence for a minute or two, and he then passed on into a small kitchen at the back and returned quickly with some bread and cheese and some coffee, which he warmed up in a little saucepan. She drank the coffee eagerly, but she could not swallow more than a mouthful or two of the bread.

“And this is Jessica’s home,” she said, when she was revived a little; “and a very comfortable home too. Eh! but I’m a lucky mother, and she’s a lucky girl. Will she be in to-night, Mr. Standring?”

“No,” answered Daniel, shortly.

“Well, I can make myself comfortable,” she said, with a laugh which made Daniel shiver. “I dare say her bed is softer than any I’ve slept on of late. Last night I slept under a scaffolding on some shavings. Don’t put yourself out about me. I can make myself comfortable.”

“But you cannot stay here all night,” replied Daniel decisively.

“And why not?” she rejoined. “I suppose I’m as good as my daughter. Ah, she’ll never be the woman I’ve been! I rode in my carriage once, man, I can tell you. And what should hinder me staying a night, or a week, or a month in your paltry little house? No, no! you’ll not see my back to-night, I promise you.”

“I wouldn’t give you a night’s lodging for five shillings,” said Daniel hastily.

“I not going to give you five farthings for it,” said the woman, settling herself in his arm-chair with an air of impudent defiance. “Jessica’s home is my home. If you turn me out, out she goes with me.”

Daniel drew his neighbor aside into the kitchen, where he consulted with him in whispers while he kept his eye upon his terrible visitor through the open door.

“What am I to do with her?” he asked. “I wouldn’t have her stop here for anything. Jessica is staying all night with the minister’s children; but she’ll come back to-morrow. Whatever am I to do?” “Give her some money to go away,” answered Brookes; and after a little heavy-hearted hesitation Daniel resolved to act upon his advice. He returned into his comfortable little parlor, which in some way had never looked even to himself so comfortable and pleasant; and he addressed his visitor with a determined and resolute aspect.

“Now,” he said, “if you won’t go away peaceable I’ll send for a policeman, as sure as I’m the chapel-keeper of St. John’s Chapel. I don’t want to be violent with you, for I’m a Christian man; but I don’t know that a Christian man is bound to give you a lodging in his own house. I should rather think he wasn’t. But if you will go away quiet, here is a shilling to pay for a bed and breakfast elsewhere. That’s all I can do or say. It’s that, or the police.”

The woman deliberated for a few minutes, looking hard into Daniel’s face; but there was no sign of irresolution or relenting upon his grave features; and at last she raised herself slowly and weariedly from the chair, and dragged her slip-shod feet across the floor towards him. She took the shilling sullenly from his hand and without a word passed into the cold and damp of the streets, while Daniel watched her unsteady steps down the court with a feeling of relief.

But when Brookes was gone, and the door was locked for the night, and the agreeable warmth of the glowing fire wrapped round him, he could not keep his thoughts from wondering where the wretched woman had found a shelter. His mind also looked onwards with misgiving to the future which lay immediately before him and Jessica; and again he lamented on his own account that he could not go for counsel to Jessica’s other friend, the minister who had been stricken into silence and unconsciousness even concerning interests still nearer and dearer to his heart.