Little Fishers: and their Nets

neven floor, shambled across the space between it and the kitchen door, a l

of thing just exactly as long as I'm going to. There ain't many men, I can tell you

place fixed up for her to sleep in. Understand, now, tha

ed the door,

linger in the door, talking to her, so many last words to say, and when at la

ed between her and her husband. She did not look as though she had life enough left to make words about anything. Sh

s though they had not closed in quiet restful sleep for months. She had not combed her ha

stern windows, but by the big old stove, which could smoke, not only, and throw out an almost unendurable heat on a warm morning like this, when

h the mistress in desperation had stuffed in, when she was waiting for the teakettle to boil, and now that there was noth

s voices in angry dispute, and the smell of a pigsty, came in togeth

the sky, yet the breakfast-table st

from one kettle set on it endless times; it must have been that way, for now that I think of it, there was but one kettle in that house. No tablecloth covered the stains; there was a cracked plate which held a few crusts of very stale

s certainly true, but if the man had only stopped to think that the reason it presented such an appearance was because he had steadily d

he husband and son, and had left it for them. She was very willing to do so.

uring full on her back, her straggling hair silvery in the sunlight, her short, faded calico dress frayed about the ankles, her feet showing plainly from the hole

d yet I don't know; since there are such women-scores of them, thousands of them-why should you not know

having a piece of pork rind on one, and set them into each other. She poured a slop of weak tea from one cracked cup into another cracked cup, her face growing paler the while. Suddenly she clutched at the table, and but for its h

kill me, and I don't know but that will be the next thing. I've slaved and slaved; if anybody ever tried to do something with nothing, I'm the one; and now I'm done. I've just got to lie do

was crying. But she shed no tears. The truth is, her poor eyes were tired of crying. It w

e for her to sleep!' Where, I wonder, and what with? It is too much! Flesh and blood can't bear any more. If ever a woman did her best I have, and done it

which sent her back frightened to the chair. The children came in, crying, and she tried to untie a string for one, and find a pin for the other; but her fingers trembled so that the knot grew har

touched without falling to pieces; and they were badly stained and soiled, the print of grimy little hands being all over them. Partly pushed under, out of sight, was a trundle-bed, that, if anything, looked more

the eyes of the poor tired woman who presently dragged herself into this room, the light and the heat from the sun seemed more than she could bear, and she

ave not imagined all her sorrowful

en told over so many times, that all t

ever admitted was that he sometimes took a drop too much! I don't think he had the least idea how man

always cross and sullen now, when he was not fierce, and she knew that this was not his natural disposition. No one need explain to her how

or him, keeping him neatly dressed, sending him to school as soon as he was old enough, bringing him up in such a way that it was often and often said in the village, "What a nice boy that Norman Lloyd is! A credit to his mother!" And the mother had sat and sewed, in the evenings when Norman was in bed, and thought over the things that fathers could do for boys which mothers could not; and then thought that there were things which mothers could do for girls that fathers could not, and Mr. Joseph Decker, the carpenter, had a little girl,

she said to herself, "No wonder, poor man; always having to eat his dinner out of a pail! No home, and no woman to see that he had things nice and

with a thirst that nothing but beer would satisfy. I have not time for all the story. The beer was not given up, the habit grew stronger and stronger, and steadily, though at first slowly, the Deckers went down. From being one of the best work

hich was almost a certainty, had now gotten hold of her-that her handsome

eft it at breakfast time, and swore at his wife for "lying in bed and sulking, instead of doing her work like a decent woman," and swore at his children for crying with hunger; and finally divided what remained of the bread between them, and went off himself to a saloon, where he spent twenty-five cents for his dinner, and fifty cents for liquor. How Norman came home, and looked about the deserted kitchen and empty cupboard, and looked in at his mother, and said he was sorry she had a headache, and

the afternoon. The stages would be due in a few minutes-the one that brought passengers over from the railroad junction a mile away. The children in the yard did not know that one of them was expected to stop at their house; and the fathe

face all flushed over the prospect of seeing father, and the rest, in a few minutes

. She had been a little thing of six whe

ecided what to do; and he was slow in deciding, and Mrs. Marshall had a family of boys, but no little girl, and held the motherless one tenderly for her mother's sake; and when the Marshalls suddenly had a

r her in all these seven years, for sh

and of late years she had looked on the possible home-coming with positive terror. Her own little ones had nothing to eat, sometimes, save what Norman provided; and if "he"-and by this Mrs. Decker meant her husband; he had ceased to be "Mr. Decker" to her, or "

-coming. The threat had come oftener of late, for Joe Decker had discovered that there was just now nothing that his wife dreaded more than the presence of this s

who lived on this street had much to do with the stage; they could not a

urning the corner below, it brought a swarm of children fr

true. Poor Nan! if the Marshalls have treated her with any kind of decency, it'll be a dreadful change, and I'm sorry enough for her. Yes, that must be Nan getting out. She's got the very

d her trunk set in the doorway, and got out her red pocket-book, and p