sweet face and shining, earnest eyes, and had arrested many a rude stare, and awakened a vague wonder in many a hardened breast.  She was not less compasionate now, only a degree more hopeless.  Since she had been so far removed from the sins and sorrows, the degradations and grinding poverty of the great city, she had, while not thinking less seriously or sympathetically of it all, felt oppressed by the impotence of those standing on the outside to lift it up to any level of hope.

‘The loud, stunning tide of human care and crime,’ as Keble has it, beat more remorselessly and hopelessly on her ears as she looked up to the smoke-obscured sky that wet and dismal day.  She felt as if heaven had never been so far away.  Almost her faith had lost its hold.  These sad thoughts, which gave a somewhat worn and wearied look to her face, were arrested by their arrival at the Infirmary gates.  It was not the visiting hour, but a word of explanation to the porter secured them admittance, and they found their way to the portion of the old house where Lizzie Hepburn lay.  The visiting surgeons and physicians had just left, so there were no impediments put in their way, and one of the housemaids speedily brought Nurse Rutherfurd to them.  She was a pleasant-faced, brisk little body, whose very presence was suggestive of skill and patience and kindly thought for others.

‘Oh yes, you are Miss Graham, and have come to see poor Lizzie,’ she said.  ’Will you just come in here a moment?  Her brother is with her.  I will tell her you have come.’

She took them into a little room outside the ward door, and lingered only a moment to give them some particulars.

‘She has been here three weeks,’ she explained; ’she was over in the surgical wards first, and then came to us; it was too late for us to do any good.  The doctor said this morning that she will probably slip away to-day.’

The little seamstress turned away to the grey window and wept silently; Gladys remained composed, but very pale.

‘And her brother is with her?  Is this the first time?’ she asked.

’Yes; it was only when we told her there was no hope that she mentioned the names of anybody belonging to her.  She spoke of you yesterday, and asked only this morning that her brother might be sent for.  Shall I tell her you have come?’

’If you please.  Tell her her old chum is with me; she will quite understand,’ said Gladys quietly, and the nurse withdrew.  Not a word passed between her and Teen while they were alone.

The nurse was not many moments absent, and the two followed her in to the long ward.  It was a painful sight to Gladys, who had never before been within the walls of an hospital.  Teen, however, looked about her with her usual calm self-possession, only her heart gave a great beat when the nurse stopped at a bed surrounded and shut off by draught-screens from sight of the other beds.  She knew, though