CHAPTER VII.
THE TOWN-SPARROW.
"This, too, will pass," is a Persian word: I should like it better if it were "This, too, shall pass." Gibbie's agony passed, for God is not the God of the dead but of the living.

Through the immortal essence in him, life became again life, and he ran about the streets as before.

Some may think that wee Sir Gibbie--as many now called him, some knowing the truth, and others in kindly mockery--would get on all the better for the loss of such a father; but it was not so.

In his father he had lost his Paradise, and was now a creature expelled.

He was not so much to be pitied as many a child dismissed by sudden decree from a home to a school; but the streets and the people and the shops, the horses and the dogs, even the penny-loaves though he was hungry, had lost half their precious delight, when his father was no longer in the accessible background, the heart of the blissful city.