“Oh God!” she groaned, rising from her knees, and resting her elbow on an iron safe near by.  “Have you a heart?” she exclaimed wildly, “I tell you my child is ill, perhaps at this moment dying, aid me! aid me!  Do not turn away a miserable mother from your door to witness her child die through destitution, when it is in your power to relieve its sufferings, and save it, so that it may live to be a blessing and solace to me.  If not for my sake, if not for the sake of the child, let me appeal to you for charity, for the sake of him, who is now imprisoned in a foreign dungeon.  He left me to defend you from the enemy—­left his wife and children to starve and suffer, for the purpose of aiding in that holy cause we are now engaged in conflict for.  For his sake, if for no other, give me the means of saving my child.”

He did not reply to her passionate words, but simply rang a bell that stood on the table before which he was seated.  His clerk answered the summons.

“If you vont quit mithout my making you,” he observed to Mrs. Wentworth in a brutal tone, “I must send for a police officer to take away.  Gootness,” he continued, speaking to himself, “I pelieve te voman is mat.”

“Save yourself the trouble,” she replied, “I will leave.  I am not yet mad,” she added.  “But, oh, God! the hour is fast approaching when madness must hold possession of my mind.  I go to my child—­my poor dying child.  Oh, Heaven, help me!”

As she moved her hand from the safe, she perceived a small package of money lying on it.  She paused and looked around.  The clerk had withdrawn at a sign from Mr. Swartz, while that gentleman was gazing intently at the open pages of a ledger, that lay before him.  For a moment she hesitated and trembled from head to foot, while the warm blood rushed to her cheeks, until they were a deep crimson hue.  Swiftly she extended her hand towards the package, and grasped it; in another instant it was concealed in her dress, and the act of despair was accomplished.

“God pity me!” she exclaimed, as she left the room and departed from the scene of her involuntary crime.

Despair had induced her to commit a theft, but no angel of God is purer in mind than was the Soldier’s Wife, when she did so.  It was the result of madness, and if the Recording Angel witnessed the act, he recorded not the transgression against her, for it was a sin only in the eyes of man; above it was the child of despair, born of a pure and innocent mind, and there is no punishment for such.

“Thank God, I have the means of saving my darling child,” exclaimed Mrs. Wentworth, as she bent her steps towards a druggist’s store.  Entering it, she purchased a few articles of medicine, and started for the old negro’s cabin, intending to send the old woman for a physician, as soon as she could reach there.