Beulah took her charge home, and when dusk came on rocked him to sleep, and snugly folded the covering of his crib over the little throbbing heart, whose hours of trial were yet veiled by the impenetrable curtain of futurity.  Mrs. Martin and her elder children had gone to a concert, and, of course, the nurse was to remain with Johnny until his mother’s return.  Standing beside the crib, and gazing down at the rosy cheeks and curling locks, nestled against the pillow, Beulah’s thoughts winged along the tear-stained past, to the hour when Lilly had been placed in her arms, by emaciated hands stiffening in death.  For six years she had held, and hushed, and caressed her dying father’s last charge, and now strange, ruthless fingers had torn the clinging heart-strings from the idol.  There were no sobs, nor groans, to voice the anguish of the desolate orphan.  The glittering eyes were tearless, but the brow was darkly furrowed, the ashy lips writhed, and the folded hands were purple from compression.  Turning from the crib, she threw up the sash, and seated herself on the window-sill.  Below lay the city, with its countless lamps gleaming in every direction, and stretching away on the principal streets, like long processions; in the distance the dark waters of the river, over which steamboat lights flashed now and then like ignesfatui; and above her arched the dome of sky, with its fiery fretwork.  Never before had she looked up at the starry groups without an emotion of exulting joy, of awful adoration.  To her worshiping gaze they had seemed glimpses of the spirit’s home; nay, loving eyes shining down upon her thorny pathway.  But now, the twinkling rays fell unheeded, impotent to pierce the sable clouds of grief.  She sat looking out into the night, with strained eyes that seemed fastened upon a corpse.  An hour passed thus, and, as the clang of the town clock died away the shrill voice of the watchman rang through the air: 

“Nine o’clock; and all’s well!”

Beulah lifted her head, and listened.  “All’s well!” The mockery maddened her, and she muttered audibly: 

“That is the sort of sympathy I shall have through life.  I am to hear that ‘all is well’ when my heart is dying, nay, dead within me!  Oh, if I could only die!  What a calm, calm time I should have in my coffin!  Nobody to taunt me with my poverty and ugliness!  Oh, what did God make me for?  The few years of my life have been full of misery; I cannot remember one single day of pure happiness, for there was always something to spoil what little joy I ever knew.  When I was born, why did not I die at once?  And why did not God take me instead of my dear, dear father?  He should have been left with Lilly, for people love the beautiful, but nobody will ever care for me.  I am of no use to anything, and so ugly that I hate myself.  O Lord, I don’t want to live another day!  I am sick of my life—­take me, take me!” But a feeble ray of comfort stole into her shivering heart, as she bowed her head upon her