They passed spacious buildings, and came to those less pretentious in style.  The crowd grew less dense, the apparel less showy and elegant; the low wooden houses contrasting strangely with the lofty edifices which they left behind.  Little shops, with broken panes in every window; children ragged, idle, and brutal in their appearance, stirred the heart of the passer-by with a grief which no words could portray.

Dawn looked on them, and longed to gather them all into one fold of love and harmony.  “O, guide me, Father, and help me to lead them to better lives,” was the earnest prayer of her soul.

“I am led hither to-day, that my sympathy with human want may be deepened,” she said to herself, while a thrill of joyous emotion pervaded her being, and faith laid hold more firm of the eternal anchor, which holds us fast, in the deep waters.

She was so indrawn that she did not notice the approach of a carriage, as they were on a street that ran at angles with the great thoroughfare, until a sharp cry from the old man aroused her to the state of affairs.  He had been struck, and had fallen under the wheels.  One moan, one convulsive motion of the features, and he was white as marble.

Before she had time to think or act, a shriek rent the air, and pierced the very soul of Dawn, for it was a wail from depths which few have fathomed.  She turned to see from whom it came, and beheld a light female form bending low over the prostrate man.  She was poorly clad, and her face bore every mark of the workings of great inward struggles.  Two men raised the fallen one carefully, and carried him into a store near by.  But it was only the clay they bore there; the soul had fled; gone to a world of a larger charity, and nobler souls than this.

“O, my father; my poor, old father,” broke from Margaret’s lips, and her body swayed to and fro with its burden of grief.

Dawn took her hand; it was icy cold.  Thus had the father and child met; one in the slumber of death; the other with the last sorrow of earth eating away what little of life remained in her.  It was, truly, a pitiful scene, and touched all who witnessed it.

“Where shall we take him, miss?” said the police respectfully, to Dawn, whom he supposed, from her manifest interest, knew the parties.

“I do not know them, sir,” she replied, turning a look of deepest pity on Margaret.

“May I ask where your father shall be taken?” said Dawn tenderly, to Margaret.

“Taken?  Why, home; no, it’s a great way off; but don’t bury him here in the wicked city.  O, take him where the grass will wave over his grave, and the blue birds sing at early morn.  O, do not bury him here,” she cried, clinging to Dawn with that confidence born of the soul when ushered, however strangely and suddenly, into the presence of truth and goodness.

“He shall be carried away to the green fields, and we will follow,” said Dawn, and stepping to a kindly-looking man in the crowd, she gave him orders to prepare a casket and shroud, and carry the body to the home of the poor woman who stood moaning beside her.