to the little seamstress, and slipped away down the weary stair and into the grimy street, where already the lamps were lit.  Her mind was full of many new and strange thoughts as she took her way home, and it was with an effort she recovered herself sufficiently to attend to her simple duties for the evening.  But when the old man and the boy came down from the warehouse, supper was ready as usual, and there was nothing remarked, except that Gladys was perhaps quieter than usual.

‘Yes, I have been, and I saw your sister, Walter,’ she said at last, when they had opportunity to talk alone.  ’She is much better, she says, and hopes to get out soon.’

‘Did you see anybody else?’

‘Yes, a friend whom she called Teen; I do not know her other name,’ answered Gladys.

‘Teen Balfour—­I ken her.  An’ what do you think of Liz?’

He put the question with a furtive anxiety of look and tone not lost on Gladys.

’I like her.  At first I thought her manner strange, but she has a feeling heart too.  And she is very beautiful.’

‘You think so too?’ said the lad, with a strange bitterness; ’then it must be true.’

‘Why should it not?  It is pleasant to be beautiful, I think,’ said Gladys, with a little smile.

‘For ladies, for you, perhaps it is, but not for Liz,’ said Walter.  ’It would be better for her if she looked like Teen.’

Gladys did not ask why.

’I am very sorry for her too.  It is so dreadful her life, sewing all day at these coarse garments.  I have many mercies, more than I thought.  And for so little money!  It is dreadful—­a great sin; do you not think so?’

‘Oh yes, it’s a sin; but it’s the way o’ the world,’ answered Walter indifferently.  ’Very likely, if I were a man and had a big shop, I’d do just the same—­screw as much as possible out of folk for little pay.  That’s gospel.’

Gladys laid her hand on his arm, and her eyes shone upon him.  ’It will not be your gospel, Walter, that I know.  Some day you will be a rich man, perhaps, and then you will show the world what a rich man can do.  Isn’t there a verse in the Bible which says, “Blessed is he that considereth the poor”?  You will consider the poor then, Walter, and I will help you.  We shall be able to do it all the better because we have been so poor ourselves.’

It was a new evangel for that proud, restless, bitter young heart, upon which the burden of life already pressed so heavily.  Gladys did not know till long after, that these words, spoken out of the fulness of her sympathy, made a man of him from that very day, and awakened in him the highest aspirations which can touch a human soul.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VII.

LIZ SPEAKS HER MIND.

‘Wat,’ said Liz Hepburn to her brother next time he came home, ’what kind o’ a lassie is thon?’

It was a question difficult for Walter to answer, and, Scotch-like, he solved it by putting another.