of in choosing to among in countries where there was no getting to air a bit o linen and where the people smelt o fit to knock vou down however she presently reappeared in a small meagre man sallow and dingy with a wandering look in his dull eyes and an excessive timidity about his deep which gave him the air of a man who had been long a solitary prisoner yet through all this and wretchedness there were some traces of comparative youth and former good looks lady though not very tender hearted still less sentimental was essentially kind and liked to dispense benefits like a goddess who looks down on the halt the and the blind that approach her shrine she was smitten with some compassion at the sight of poor who struck her as the mere battered wreck of a vessel that might have once floated enough on its outward voyage to the sound of pipes and she spoke gently as she pointed out to him the she wished him to copy and he seemed to sun himself in her radiant presence so that when he made his exit with the music books under his arm his bow though not less was less timid it was ten years at least since had seen bright and stately and beautiful as lady for the time was far off in which he had trod the stage in satin and feathers the of one short season he had completely lost his voice in tho following winter and had ever since been little better than a cracked fiddle which is good for nothing but for like many italian he was too ignorant to teach ana if it had not l en for his one talent of he and his young helpless wife might have starved then just after their third child was bom fever came swept away the sickly mother and the two eldest children and attacked himself who rose from his sick bed with brain and muscle and a tiny baby on his hands scarcely four months old he lodged over a fruit shop kept by a stout loud of tongue and in temper but who had had children bom to her and so had taken care of the tiny yellow black eyed and tended himself through hia sickness here he continued to live earning a meagre for himself and his little one by the work of music put into his hands chiefly by he seemed to exist for nothing but the child he tended it he it he to it living with it alone in his one room above the shop only asking his landlady to take care of the during his short in and carrying home work customers that fruit shop might often see the tiny seated on the floor with her legs in a heap of peas which it was her delight to kick about or perhaps deposited like a in a large basket out of harm s way sometimes however left his little one with another kind of he was very regular in his which he paid thrice a week in the cathedral carrying with him here when the high morning was warming the glittering wi out and struggling against the massive gloom within the shadow of a man mb s love a child on his arm might be seen flitting across the more stationary shadows of and and making its way towards a little hanging in a retired spot near the choir amid all the of the mighty cathedral r had fixed on this as the symbol of mercy and protection � just as a child in the presence of a great landscape sees none of the glories of wood and sky but sets its heart on a floating feather or insect that happens to be on a level with its eye here then worshipped and prayed setting on the floor by his side and now and then when the cathedral lay near some place where he had to call and did not like to take her he would leave her there in front of the where she would sit perfectly good amusing herself low noises and of her tiny body and when came back he always found that the blessed mother had taken good care of that was briefly the history of who fulfilled so well the orders lady gave him that she sent him away again with a stock of new work but this time week after week passed and he neither reappeared nor sent home the music to him began to be anxious and was thinking of sending to inquire at the address had given her when one day as she was equipped for driving out the brought in a small piece of paper which he said had been left for her by a man who was carrying fruit the paper contained only three tremulous lines in italian � will the for the love of have pity on a dying man and come to him lady recognized the handwriting as s in spite of its and going down to her carriage ordered the coachman to drive to the coach stopped in a dirty narrow street opposite la s fruit shop and that lar e specimen of womanhood immediately presented herself at the door to the extreme disgust of mrs sharp who remarked privately to mr that la was a the fruit woman however was all smiles and deep to the who not ver well understanding her dialect the conversation by asking to be shown at once to la preceded her up the dark narrow stairs and opened a door through whidi she begged her to enter directly opposite the door lay on a low miserable bed his eyes were glazed and no movement indicated that he was conscious of their entrance on the foot of the bed was seated a tiny child apparently not three years old her head covered by a linen 