Old Widow Black peeped at the two as they passed her door.

"It's a mortal pity she's got none o' her own to take to; then she'd know what a trouble they was!" she grumbled to the potatoes she was peeling. "I hain't no patience with suchlike nussin' and messin' o' other folks' childer."

Sarah Ann had got the baby safely deposited on her own hearth-rug by this time; and the little thing, well-pleased with its release from the shawl, was stretching out short fat toes and fingers to the warmth.

"Ain't he a beauty, mother?" cried the admiring Sarah Ann. "And he knows me already. He fair cried to come to me when he saw me come in at the door this morning, that he did. Yes, my darling! You know Saray, don't you?" She bent to kiss the palms of the baby's hands and the soles of his feet, before hurrying off about her morning work.

Her mother looked after her with a smile and a sigh. Few besides herself knew how big and soft a heart Sarah Ann Harris carried. Her decided manner, her quick speech and her unquestionable capability had earned for her the character of a strong-minded woman. There were few to discern the craving and the capacity for love which made Sarah's hand so gentle with the sick and so tender with the children.

But the children, they knew! No little one ever shrank when Sarah's hand flew up to emphasize her speech; she never struck. And the very infants smiled back into her face as she caught their great round eyes over their mothers' shoulders, passing up the road. Nervous babies neither started nor winced in Sarah's arms. Happy the woman who was on such terms with Sarah Ann that she could ask her to mind her baby on a Saturday afternoon, while the week's shopping was being performed in the neighbouring market-town.

Sarah Ann's father and mother loved children almost as well as she did herself, and as these three were the only occupants of the roomy old cottage, it came about that the kitchen was rarely without some little visitor. There was, it is true, generally a reigning favourite: some child who was borrowed daily, and who grew to look upon the Harris's cottage as a second home. But Lucy Phypers, the late child of Sarah's adoption, had been carried off by her parents to a new home ten miles " up the road"—that is to say ten miles farther from London, and the bereaved foster-mother had turned for her comfort to the baby Chris, his mother's tenth child.

It was wonderful how well the children behaved who came under Sarah Ann's guardianship. Their parents, who were acquainted with a totally dif ferent side of their character, would stand aghast at some exhibition of Sarah's sway and the willing submission which was accorded to it.

"There now! Y'd 'ave skreeked the place down if I'd ha' done that at home!" Mrs. Day admitted admiringly, as Chris, uncomplaining, yielded the forbidden tongs to Sarah's pleasure. "Who'd ha' thought you'd got such a way with you! Sure, and I don' know 'ow you does it."

But Sarah knew, and the children knew ; and

they loved her for that quiet firmness and that freedom from caprice which their own natural mothers lacked. Where was the good of yielding a point to-day which they felt might be ceded to them to-morrow? Now Sarah never commanded unless she meant to be obeyed, and the babies knew instinctively with her what was expected from them.

So as time went by, little Chris Day, creeping into Lucy's vacated place, gradually expanded his dominion over the Harris trio, and in particular over Sarah Ann, to whom he returned an undivided devotion.

Winter had set in, cold and hard. Short dark days did not suffice to undo any of the work of the long cruel nights. No snow fell, but the roads were turned to frozen rock. By the ponds, great jagged heaps of ice stood piled, cairn-like, at the point where the men daily broke the surface for the cattle to drink. The remotest twigs on the elmtops, outlined with sparkling, frozen fog, pointed skywards with the stiffness of dead fingers, which no power could bend or sway. The village smoke, a dense, dirtier grey than the iron sky, streaked up against it in parallel columns from the cottage chimneys. All the more worthless men, and some of the better ones, besides those suffering from the exceptional severity of the winter, were out of work, and lounged by day round the publichouses, on the pretext of holding a traveller's horse, or on the look-out for some "good fellow" to give them a drink. Glimpses of the women, more draggled than even their wont it was to be, could be caught through the half-open doors, urging fires buried under coal-dust to burn brightly, or anxiously counting the potatoes which should suffice for the mid-day meal. The children ran shivering home from school, their little red noses shining over motley-coloured "comforters," their frozen fingers drawn up under the shelter of their coat-sleeves. The oldest inhabitant could not remember so hard a Christmas. The river was frozen for a mile of its course, and skating parties boiled their kettles on its surface.

The wind had at last risen, and there was an uneasy feeling in the air. Heavy clouds of dull blue were mounting up from the horizon and flying in scuds southwards. Some prophesied snow, and others shook their heads. Since sunrise darkness seemed to be settling down again, and the villagers lighted their lamps.

Then a gust flew up the village street with the long piercing shriek of some human thing. There was a rattle and clatter on the roadway as of metal falling. The folks ran to their doors, and looked out, staring and affrighted.

The darkness had thickened, and no one could

the street through the holes riven in the stormclouds. A murky blue atmosphere enveloped everything, but the darkness was spending itself in the chill torrent. The opposite row of cottages became gradually visible, and the men at their open doors recognised their neighbours peering out in a terrified curiosity into the gloom and hubbub.

Sarah Ann, standing at her door, could now distinguish the figure of Richard Day, little Chris's father, filling up his own open doorway. The man had an injured leg, and his left knee bowed out at right angles from the other limb. His hard weather-beaten face was fringed with an iron-grey beard. He wore corduroys and a garment of the degenerated smock species.

Through the peephole left in the hollow of Richard's legs, peered a small face. Chris was barely two years old, but his nature was in quisitive. He had crawled unbidden from his little bed, and wearing only his night-shift, which he had considerably outgrown, he was discovering for himself the cause which kept his father staring at the door, and made his mother hide her head under her apron against the kitchen fire. His little warm hand slid out between his father's feet and essayed to lay hold on the wooden step of the door frame. But everything was coated with ice, and the tiny fingers failed to grip on. Unnoticed, Chris's head and shoulders now emerged beyond the paternal corduroys, and the venturesome hand explored further. One chubby knee protruded on the door step, and then Master Chris had practical experience of that which he desired to know. With a shriek that echoed to Sarah, and a fine flourish of prime pink limbs, the half-clothed baby slid from underneath his father's very nose, out over the door-step, and down the steep embankment which raised the frozen footpath above the ice-bound road.

It took Richard Day a minute-and-a-half to realise the situation, during which time Chris's screams and the shouts of laughter and dismay of the onlookers well-nigh drowned the tempest. Then the father slowly ejaculated: "My Lawks!" and turned to take counsel of his spouse.

The worthy couple were still consulting as to what means could possibly be employed to rescue their last born, to the accompaniment of his despairing howls, when Widow Black from next door, scattering cinders from the shovel she held. before her, and clinging with her claw-like fingers to the cottage walls, joined the conclave.

66

Oh, to see Mrs. Wren!" she sobbed, with hysterical laugh. "Her started off so perky for to fetch the child up, and when her got on to t' road, her up wi' 'er legs!" The rest of the sentence, of incoherent speech, was illustrated by gesture. "An' her can't get up," she continued, breathless. "Her keeps slippin' an' slidin'; and when her went for to lay hold on the brat, he set up a skreekin'! There, I never did!"

With the help of the women, Day arrayed himself, dragging worsted stockings over boots and trousers. Then he borrowed his wife's clothes line and a broom-handle. Supported by the one, he left the cord in the women's hands after having

told him out, in very much the same fashion that an unwieldly bathing-machine on a steep coast is often handled. And with just such a gait, lurching, trembling, now slipping in an unpremeditated spurt, and now sticking altogether, did Richard Day descend the icy bank to the road.

He was almost within reach of his child, whose screams had subsided into a pitiful sobbing. Mrs. Wren, who had abandoned all attempts at regaining her foothold unaided, was sitting crosslegged, patient and resolute, on the road but a few feet from the baby. She had forgotten the original intent of her expedition, her own dire necessity banishing every other consideration. At sight of Richard her face lighted, and as he cautiously moved by her towards the baby she made a sudden grab at his leg. The unexpected movement and clutch entirely upset the lame man's equilibrium. The broom-handle slid from his hold and went rolling rapidly down the slope of the street. Richard's heels slid up, and he fell with a mighty thwack on his back in the roadway, while the shouts of the onlookers rent the air.

as a

But now a fresh excitement was added to the scene. Up the road came hurriedly a moving mass, at first unrecognisable, but soon discerned woman crawling carefully but quickly on hands and knees to the site of the disaster. Her head was thrown back, and there were laughter and resolution on her face. Her cheeks were crimson with the unaccustomed exercise. A thick shawl was gathered round her neck, its ends flung behind. Little Chris had heard her voice and: stopped crying. In another moment she had reached him and clasped him safely in her arms. She unwound the shawl from about her, and tied him closely to her bosom. Then, turning her back abruptly on the child's father and Mrs. Wren, who were still sprawling in the road, indulging in mutual recriminations in no gentle tones, she made her way once more, as she had come, swiftly down the street, crept up the bank: to the footpath at a point where it was less. steep, and reached her own door without disaster. As she stood safely within it, and untied the laughing child from about her, the villagers raised three ringing cheers for Sarah Ann Harris, and three cheers more.

THR

CHAPTER II.

HREE left but little mark on the village. years One or two of the craziest of the timber cottages had been repaired, and the woodwork of the School-house boasted a new coat of paint. The long-clothes babies of that cruel winter ran now, breeched or frocked; and their places in their mothers' arms had been taken by just such round-eyed chubby-cheeked things as they had been. There were a few more mounds in the churchyard, long mounds mostly, undistinguishable except by the crookedness of the angle at which the jampots stood, which had held their summer decoration of an occasional bunch of flowers. It was autumn now-a wet, windy

autumn, and the road-gutters were noisy with the running water drained from the fields. Young Star had fallen when out with the 'chines. Report had it that he issued drunk from the village inn, and insisted on riding in the procession which had just ploughed Farmer Griffith's nineacre. Be that as it may, it is certain that the wretched man fell from his place, and the wheels of the great engine passed over his leg. He was carried senseless to the Infirmary, and died shortly afterwards. His funeral supplied matter for much comment. In the sodden corner of the churchyard where he was to be laid to his rest, water filled the grave as the sexton dug lower. Great bundles of straw

had to be laid in to receive the coffin, and a local preacher drew a moving moral for his hearers' benefit next Sunday.

And now old Muss' Harris, Sarah Ann's mother and the faithful friend of little Chris, lay sick unto death. The child crept softly about his play in the kitchen below, while Sarah watched by her mother's bed in the chamber above. Every now and again a little wistful face peered from the stairway which led direct from the kitchen into the bedroom. Then Sarah, catching sight of it, would mutely shake her head and put her finger to her lips, and Chris would disappear again, with tearful eyes and heaving heart. The kitten was his great comfort-a black kitten, full of diabolical mischief, and of an absolutely wanton character. But occasionally the kitten permitted itself to be hugged, or more often it diverted Chris's grief with its fantastic antics; and the child clung to it, investing it with his own thoughts and great loving heart.

At last it was all over upstairs. Chris was allowed to give grandmother one more kiss, and then all was quiet, and dark, and white, in the chamber upstairs. Chris wondered why Sarah Ann put the sheet over grandmother's face now, when she had never slept thus in the old times. He found some November violets in the back garden at home, and crept with them to the darkened room, therewith to comfort his old friend. She had always loved flowers, and the child laid them now close by her on the pillow, lifting the sheet to do SO. He was not frightened of the sweet, calm, old face; but such awe was on him that he dared not kiss it as he longed to do. It must be God, he meditated, who had swept out so many of the deep lines from grannie's forehead, and he dared not put his lips where God's Hand had lingered.

Downstairs the old man sat over the fire, his back turned to the light, "weavin' sorrowfully" as his thoughts clung to the faithful partner of his long life. Sarah Ann moved softly about her

household duties, her face set for self-control, her eyes dry and bright shining out of her sad white face. Chris's mother had wanted to keep him at home during this time of trouble. But both Sarah and her father begged for the child to be allowed to come to them as usual. And he was so quiet, so hushed, so anxious to show his sympathy in the sorrow, that he was more of a comfort than a trouble to the bereaved couple.

He came now and stood between the old man's legs, looking into his face with his deep hazel eyes.

Grandfather had turned eighty; Chris was barely five.

"Don't grieve, Grandfather," said the child, sidling against him with a caressing movement. "I'll get 'ee a lubbly bundle of straw to put in the bottom, under poor Grannie's coffin. Don't 'ee take on so!"

"Whatever do the child mean?" the old man asked, turning his bewildered face to his daughter. "Whatever be he dreamin' on?"

"He'v heard talk of poor Bob Star's buryin', I reckon," Sarah Ann answered, a wan smile forcing its way on her face. "And he thinks the straw would be more comfortable-like. Is that it, sonny?"

Chris nodded gravely, while the old man stroked his head, winning comfort from the touch in much the same mysterious way that Chris had gained comfort from the kitten.

The child had begged leave to attend the funeral, and Sarah had been careful to supply him with a little black tie and a black cap. But when the hour came for the procession to start Chris was missing-nor could he be found at his mother's home.

So they went without him, and stood around the grave, Sarah Ann slight and upright, her face steadied and solemn, while her father crushed with sorrow, and further grievously incommoded by his new black cloth clothes, clung sobbing to her arm. All at once a whisper ran through the little crowd of mourners, and the parson's voice broke. A small figure hastily pushed its way forward and parted the on-lookers. He found his way to Sarah Ann and her father, and stood panting and triumphant before them. His black cap sat well back on his vigorous bronze curls, his hazel eyes shone with a glad light. Under one arm he held firmly the protesting kitten, while behind him he dragged a large bundle of straw.

"Here 'tis, Grandfather!" he cried joyously. "I've fetched it for her all the way from Farmer Griffiths. Now Grannie 'll lie comfortable. So dont 'ee cry no more, and take on so, please don't! I knows her'll be pleased!"

Then he turned to Betsy, somewhat shamefaced. "I've brought Scamp too," he said apologetically. "You said as how 'twas all those as loved Grannie as 'ud be here to day, and Scamp did love her, that she did! 'Tis all right, Saray Ann. Her wears black allays, and I've giv' her my tie, as I had the cap."

GR

CHAPTER III.

RANDFATHER had been dead two years, and Chris was ten years old when he learned that Sarah Ann was going to be married. At first the child said nothing, but he avoided Sarah's cottage, and a look of grief and perplexity settled on his face. Sarah Ann in her new content, and in the preoccupation which attended her arrangements, did not notice this at first. But on the eve of her wedding she found the child, and discerning his mood tried to argue him into a happier frame of mind.

But all her efforts were unavailing, Five-andthirty could not grasp the standpoint of te

Chris was wounded in the heart by one who had never before given him an ache.

He sat by the fire beside her and let her talk on. Then he rose deliberately and stood before her, his grieved little face lighted only by the dancing warmth from the hearth.

""Tis of no use to talk, Saray Ann," he said slowly, "I allays thought as how you'd wait till I was old enough to marry you. I can't talk about it, but it hurts there."

He laid his forefinger on the left side of the blouse Sarah Ann had made him, cast her one last long reproachful look, and softly left the cottage.

"God bless the boy!" gasped Sarah Ann, staring dazed after him. But somehow she felt inclination to laugh.

no

From that day forward Chris never crossed Sarah's door. If he met her in the road, he would avert his gaze sharply, as though the sight of her hurt him; and though he saluted her he never stayed to speak. He was doing well at school Sarah knew, and was spoken of by all as a promising lad. From his life it was evident that he abode by the rules which Sarah had impressed on him in old days. And yet towards her he acted as though the past had not been.

"Little Chris Day must be jealous of me," laughed Sarah Ann's husband, soon after their marriage. "He never comes nigh you now, and he used to be allays along o' you.'

But to Sarah Ann the matter was no joke, and the men, seeing the subject was distasteful to her, let it alone.

When Chris had reached the age of eighteen, news reached Sarah that he was going to enlist. She lay in wait for him one evening in the lane, and speaking to him for the first time for eight years, asked him if it were true.

""Tis right enough, missus," Chris answered. civilly. "There's nothing for a fellow to do about here, but get into mischief. And I want to see the world."

"I reckon you're right," Sarah Ann said, for she was a woman who thought and read, and was superior to the prejudice of her class. "And I'm glad you're going out of the village."

She could not see his face, but his voice sounded very bright as he answered her.

"Wish me Godspeed, then, Saray Ann," he said. "Mother she takes on awful. But I tell her it's not the army as makes beasts of sodgers. They're ready to be beasts first."

66

"I wish you Godspeed, Chris," Sarah Ann said solemnly, and as she held out her hand, she felt that of the child she had known grip round hers with the clasp of a powerful man.

"You don't ask me to promise anything, Saray Ann," the lad said huskily. "I know that's because you trust me. I shan't never forget you, nor what you taught me, Saray Ann. And if I never see your face in life again you'll know I'm your boy yet beyond the grave."

Sarah felt the rare tears spring to her eyes, and without more words they parted there in the dusk. Next day Chris had left home, and shortly afterwards had sailed for India.

News of the absentee came to his mother regularly, and it was always good news. Chris rose steadily and surely, and at four-and-twenty was acting sergeant. In one more year he would be home to see them all, though he would not leave the army-so he wrote.

But he never came home again. Together with his regiment he was sent to put down a rising on the North-West frontier, and with many another brave and unnamed soldier he fell, in the service of his Queen. Away in the little English village tardy news reached them at length of his sufferings and death, and a fellow soldier visiting them on his way to his own home brought his mother his treasures, and for Sarah Ann the little Bible and Prayer Book she had given him eighteen years previously, with which to go to Sunday-school and church. Both volumes had been carefully sewn into cloth covers, but they bore witness of long and constant use.

Sitting by Sarah Ann's fire the soldier told of Chris's last hours, of his faith and his patience.

WHILE walking one day through the streets

WH

house.

of Jerusalem, I saw a number of masons busy rebuilding and transforming an old Over the doorway I noticed, in passing, a rude impression of the human hand, which had evidently been made a short time previously in the soft mortar. On inquiry I was told that it is the custom of masons in Jerusalem to impress this sign upon the structure they are building, in order to avert the evil eye and to secure success in their labours. I looked out for other specimens of this curious superstition, in my walks through the sacred city, and found a good many, old as well as recent, some rude and transient, and others elaborately carved. Several were made on the lintel stone above the door, or on the plaster of the wall beside it in a bright red colour, or in a deep blue; this last kind being considered the most efficacious. On the occasion of a birth or a marriage, such impressions are not unfrequently placed -on some conspicuous part of the dwelling outside, in order to bring good luck. The women of the house generally daub them on with whitewash.

The Jews interpret the five fingers of the handprint as symbolising the five names of God, which are very potent in averting evil. Charms consisting of the different fingers of the hand made of gold, or silver or glass, are worn by Moslem, Jewish and Christian children alike around their necks to protect them from the evil eye. This superstition is not of Jewish, but of Babylonian. origin, and from the earliest ages has been widespread over all the world. The symbol of the Hand of Might was carved upon the Roman standard of the Cæsars. An open hand in full relief wrought in bronze and placed as a symbol against evil in the prows of ancient ships has just been fished up from the Lake of Nemi. The sunken ship to which it belonged was attached to the Temple of Diana on the shore close by, and was used in some of the festivities or religious services connected with the worship of the goddess. On the sceptre of the Indian goddess Sceva the Hand of Might is also carved. The sacred Hand of Mahomet often appears in a widespread form in metal above a suspended lamp throughout the East. The surface is covered with engraved Arabic characters, either expressing the titles of Mahomet or a verse from the Koran. The Red Hand is the device in the coat of arms of Ulster, and is seen upon many of the old crosses of Ireland. In the ancient temples of India and Mexico, this blood-red symbol is seen occupying a prominent position on the walls. On the buffalo robes of some tribes of American Indians the Hand of Might used to be embroidered or painted in brilliant vermilion. The visitor to the mosque of St. Sophia in Constantinople, finds this sign

depicted over its principal door. While in the early Christian Church the manifested presence of God the Father was represented by the ancient symbol of a hand issuing from a cloud.

That this superstition came to Jerusalem from the banks of the Euphrates, where the old Turanian charms were practised and amulets universally worn, is proved by the fact noticed by Smith in his "Assyrian Discoveries," that the only ornament on the interior walls of the Assyrian palaces consisted of rude models of hands placed on the cornices, fist upwards, their design being to preserve the place against evil spirits. And as there was much commercial intercourse in ancient times between Palestine and Assyria, by the way of the deep defiles of Petra, we are prepared for what Professor Palmer and Major Conder tell us, that in the ruins of El Barid, near the "rose-red city half as old as time," they found a cistern whose cornice was decorated with hand-prints, alternately black and red. We can thus trace the superstition along the route which it had taken from east to west.

The prevalence of this kind of ornamenta tion in Assyria and Babylonia, lends a new and weird significance to the tragical incident which happened in Belshazzar's palace on the night before the overthrow of his capital. The king and his courtiers were celebrating the great resurrection and marriage feast of Ishtar and Tammuz the Babylonian Adonis. In all likeli hood the cornice of the great hall in which the banquet was spread, was adorned with representa tions of the Hand of Might as an object of idolatrous worship. And the sevenfold light of the splendid Jewish candlesticks, carried away as the spoil of war from the Temple of Jerusalem, standing in the centre of the table, would bring out in vivid light and shade the mystic symbol. Under the protection of the Hand of Might, Belshazzar feared not the enemy that was thundering at his gate, and felt free to indulge his mad revels with his courtiers. They filled the sacred golden vessels of the temple again and again with the intoxicating wine, and sang songs, we are specially told, "in the praise of their gods of gold and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood and of stone"; while they mocked and defied the God of Israel, whose consecrated vessels they were polluting with their profane orgies. When the mad revelry was at its height, suddenly under the cornice ornamented with the Hand of Might, on the wall in front of the king, illumined by the full light of the seven-branched golden candlestick, there appeared the shadow of a hand with its fingers writing three words of terrible import, in a language which no one knew. The idol effigy, the superstitious charm on the palace-cornice, was of no avail. It could not