She stopped one instant on the threshold.  Within was a home, a chance for heaven; out yonder in the night—­what?

“You will put me out?” she said.

“I know your like.  There’s no help for such as you”; and he closed the door.

She sat down on the curb-stone.  It was snowing hard.  For about an hour she was there, perfectly quiet.  The snow lay in warm, fleecy drifts about her:  when it fell on her arm, she shook it off:  it was so pure and clean, and she——­She could have torn her flesh from the bones, it seemed so foul to her that night.  Poor Charley!  If she had only known how God loved something within her, purer than the snow, which no foulness of flesh or circumstance could defile!  Would you have told her, if you had been there?  She only muttered, “Never,” to herself now and then, “Never.”

A little boy came along presently, carrying a loaf of bread under his arm,—­a manly, gentle little fellow.  She let Benny play with him sometimes.

“Why, Lot!” he said.  “I’ll walk part of the way home with you.  I’m afraid.”

She got up and took him by the hand.  She could hardly speak.  Tired, worn-out in body and soul; her feet had been passing for years through water colder than the river of death:  but it was nearly over now.

“It’s better for Benny it should end this way,” she said.

She knew how it would end.

“Rob,” she said, when the boy turned to go to his own home, “you know Adam Craig?  I want you to bring him to my room early to-morrow morning,—­by dawn.  Tell him he’ll find his sister Nelly’s child there:  and never to tell that child that his ‘Charley’ was Lot Tyndal.  You’ll remember, Rob?”

“I will.  Happy Christmas, Charley!”

She waited a minute, her foot on the steps leading to her room.

“Rob!” she called, weakly, “when you play with Ben, I wish you’d call me Charley to him, and never—­that other name.”

“I’ll mind,” the child said, looking wistfully at her.

She was alone now.  How long and steep the stairs were!  She crawled up slowly.  At the top she took a lump of something brown from her pocket, looked at it long and steadily.  Then she glanced upward.

“It’s the only way to keep Benny from knowing,” she said.  She ate it, nearly all, then looked around, below her, with a strange intentness, as one who says good-bye.  The bell tolled the hour.  Unutterable pain was in its voice,—­may-be dumb spirits like Lot’s crying aloud to God.

“One hour nearer Christmas,” said Adam Craig, uneasily.  “Christ’s coming would have more meaning, Janet, if this were a better world.  If it wasn’t for these social necessities that”——­

He stopped.  Jinny did not answer.

Lot went into her room, roused Ben with a kiss.  “His last remembrance of me shall be good and pleasant,” she said.  She took him on her lap, untying his shoes.

“My baby has been hunting eggs to-day in Rob’s stable,” shaking the hay from his stockings.