“O, mother!  I’m glad you’ve come.  I’m so hungry!” cried one of her little ones, springing to her side as she entered.  “Won’t we have supper soon, now?”

This was too much for her, and she sank exhausted and almost fainting into a chair.  Tears soon brought temporary relief to an overburdened heart.  Then she soothed her hungry little ones as well as she could, promising them a good supper before they went to bed.

“But why can’t we have it now?” urged one, more impatient, or more hungry, than the rest.

“Because mother hasn’t got any good bread for little Henry—­” she replied—­“But she will have some soon.  So all be good children, and wait until mother goes out and gets some bread and meat, and then we will all have a nice supper.”

After quieting the importunities of her children in this way, and soothing little Thomas, who was sick and fretful, Mrs. Haller again left them, and bent her steps, with a reluctant spirit, towards the comfortable dwelling of her sister, nearly a mile away from where she lived.  The interview with that sister has already been given.

When she turned away, as has been seen, empty-handed, from the door of that sister, it was with feelings that few can imagine.  It seemed to her as if she were forsaken both of earth and heaven.  How she got home, she hardly knew, but when she entered that cheerless place she found her poor sick child, for whom she had no money to buy medicine, burning with fever, and crying bitterly.  Her brutal husband was snoring on the bed the smaller children quarrelling among themselves, and her oldest boy, half-intoxicated, leaning over the back of a chair, and swinging his body backward and forward in the (sic) idiotcy of drunkenness.  As she entered, the children crowded round her, asking fretfully for their suppers; but nothing had she to give them, for she had come away empty-handed and repulsed from the door of her affluent sister, to whose dwelling she had gone solely to ask for some food for her children!  In the momentary energy of despair she roused her husband rudely from the bed, and bade him, in an excited tone, to go and get some bread for the children:  The brute, angered by her words and manner, struck her a blow upon the head, which brought her senseless to the floor.

An hour at least passed before she recovered her senses; when she opened her eyes, she found herself on a bed, her sister sitting by her side, weeping, and Mr. Williams standing over her.  Her husband was not there, some of the children were crying about the room, and others had fallen asleep on the floor.  The oldest boy was sitting in the position before-mentioned.  Brief explanations were made, and Mrs. Williams offered a faint apology for her harsh treatment.  The appeal of her sister had touched her feelings, and she had proposed to Mr. Williams to go over and see her.  On entering her dwelling they found her senseless on the floor, and the children screaming around her.  The husband was not there.