HER LAST HALF-CROWN.

"Once I had friends-though now by all forsaken; Once I had parents-they are now in heaven.

I had a home once

Worn out with anguish, sin, and cold, and hunger, Down sunk the outcast, death had seized her senses. There did the stranger find her in the morning

God had released her.

SOUTHEY.

VOL. II.

I

1

UGH MILLER, the geologist, journalist, and man of genius, was sitting

H

in his newspaper office late one dreary

winter night. The clerks had all left, and he was
preparing to go, when a quick rap came to the
door. He said "Come in," and, looking towards
the entrance, saw a little ragged child all wet with
sleet. "Are ye Hugh Miller?" "Yes." "Mary
Duff wants ye."
"What does she want?" "She's
deein." Some misty recollection of the name made
him at once set out, and with his well-known plaid
and stick, he was soon striding after the child, who
trotted through the now deserted High Street, into
the Canongate. By the time he got to the Old
Playhouse Close, Hugh had revived his memory of
Mary Duff; a lively girl who had been bred up
beside him in Cromarty. The last time he had
seen her was at a brother mason's marriage, where

Mary was "best maid," and he "best man." He seemed still to see her bright young careless face, her tidy shortgown, and her dark eyes, and to hear her bantering, merry tongue.

Down the close went the ragged little woman, and up an outside stair, Hugh keeping near her with difficulty; in the passage she held out her hand and touched him; taking it in his great palm, he felt that she wanted a thumb. Finding her way like a cat through the darkness, she opened a door, and saying, “That's her!" vanished. By the light of a dying fire he saw lying in the corner of the large empty room something like a woman's clothes, and on drawing nearer became aware of a thin pale face and two dark eyes looking keenly but helplessly up at him. The eyes were plainly Mary Duff's, though he could recognise no other feature. She wept silently, gazing steadily at him. "Are you Mary Duff?" "It's a' that's o' me, Hugh." She then tried to speak to him, something plainly of great urgency, but she couldn't; and seeing that she was very ill, and was making herself worse, he put half-a-crown into her feverish hand, and said he would call again in the morning. He could get no information about her from the neighbours they were surly or asleep.

When he returned next morning, the little girl