CHAPTER XIX.

A LOST SHEEP.

The two sallied out and walked arm in arm up the street. It was a keen, bright, starlight night, with everything on earth frozen stiff and hard, and the stars above sparkling and glinting like white flames in the intense clear blue. Just at the turn of the second street, a woman who had been crouching in a doorway rose, and, coming up towards the two, attempted to take Harry's arm.

With an instinctive movement of annoyance and disgust, he shook her off indignantly.

Bolton, however, stopped and turned, and faced the woman. The light of a street lamp showed a face, dark, wild, despairing, in which the history of sin and punishment were too plainly written. It was a young face, and one that might once have been beautiful; but of all that nothing remained but the brightness of a pair of wonderfully expressive eyes. Bolton advanced a step towards her and laid his hand on her shoulder, and, looking down on her, said:

"Poor child, have you no mother?"

"Mother! Oh!"

The words were almost shrieked, and then the woman threw herself at the foot of the lamp-post and sobbed convulsively.

"Harry," said Bolton, "I will take her to the St. Barnabas; they will take her in for the night."

Then, taking the arm of the woman, he said in a voice of calm authority, "Come with me."

He raised her and offered her his arm. "Child, there is hope for you," he said. "Never despair. I will take you where you will find friends."

A walk of a short distance brought them to the door of the refuge, where he saw her received, and then turning he retraced his steps to Harry.

"One more unfortunate," he said, briefly, and then immediately took up the discussion of a point in the proof-sheet just where he had left it. Harry was so excited by the incident that he could hardly keep up the discussion which Bolton was conducting.

"I wonder," he said, after an interval, "who that woman is, and what is her history."

"The old story, likely," said Bolton.

"What is curious," said Harry, "is that Eva described such a looking woman as hanging about our house the other evening. It was the evening when she was going over to the Vanderheyden house to persuade the old ladies to come to us this evening. She seemed then to have been hanging about our house, and Eva spoke in particular of her eyes—just such singular, wild, dark eyes as this woman has."

"It may be a mere coincidence," said Bolton. "She may have had some errand on your street. Whatever the case be, she is safe for the present. They will do the best they can for her. She's only one more grain in the heap!"

Shortly after, Harry took leave of Bolton and returned to his own house. He found all still, Eva waiting for him by the dying coals and smoking ashes of the fire. Alice had retired to her apartment.

"We've had an adventure," he said.

"What! to-night?"

Harry here recounted the scene and Bolton's course, and immediately Eva broke out: "There, Harry, it must be that very woman that I saw the night I was going into the Vanderheyden's; she seems to be hanging round this neighborhood. What can she be? Tell me, Harry, had she very brilliant dark eyes, and a sort of dreadfully haggard, hopeless look?"

"Exactly. Then I was provoked at her assurance in laying her hand on my arm; but when I saw her face I was so struck by its misery that I pitied her. You ought to have seen Bolton; he seemed so calm and commanding, and his face, as he looked down on her, had a wonderful expression; and his voice,—you know that heavy, deep tone of his,—when he spoke of her mother it perfectly overcame her. She seemed almost convulsed, but he assumed a kind of authority and led her away to the St. Barnabas. Luckily he knew all about that, for he had talked with St. John about it."

"Yes, indeed, I heard them talking about it this very evening; so it is quite a providence. I do wonder who she is or what she is. Would it do for me to go to-morrow and inquire?"

"I don't know, my dear, as you could do anything. They will do all that is possible there, and I would not advise you to interfere merely from curiosity. You can do nothing."

"Strange!" said Eva, still looking in the fire while she was taking the hairpins out of her hair and loosening her neck ribbon, "strange, the difference in the lot of women. That girl has been handsome! People have loved her. She might have been in a home, happy like me, with a good husband—now there she is in the cold streets. It makes me very unhappy to think such things must be. You know how Bolton spoke of God, the Good Shepherd—how he cared more for one lost one than for all that went not astray. That is so beautiful—I do hope she will be saved."

"Let us hope so, darling."

"It seems selfish for me to wrap my comforts about me, and turn away my thoughts, and congratulate myself on my good luck—don't it?"

"But, darling, if you can't do anything, I don't know why you should dwell on it. But I'll promise you Bolton shall call and inquire of the Sisters, and if there is anything we can do, he will let us know. But now it's late, and you are tired and need rest."