She seemed to see her dying mother again, laying the helpless baby in her arms, and bidding her to be a mother to it.

She heard her father's last charge to take care of little Nan, when he also was passing away.

Her own wicked carelessness and neglect, Stephen's terrible sorrow if little Nan should be dead, all the woeful consequences of her fault, were stamped upon her heart with a sudden and very bitter stroke.

Those who were watching her from the lane saw her stand as if transfixed for a moment; and then a piercing scream, which made every one within hearing start with terror, rang through the frosty air, as Martha sprang forward to the mouth of the old pit, and, peering down its dark and narrow depths, could just discern a little white figure lying motionless at the bottom of the shaft..