her hair, murmuring,
the while, all the reassuring words at his command.

"The boy's gone," he said, at last. "You'd be all alone without me.
He ain't here. But he's well looked after, Millie. Don't you fret
about him. By this time he's sound asleep."

She slipped from his embrace. He made no effort to detain her:
conceiving her secure in his possession. A moment she stood staring at
the floor, lost to her surroundings: then quickly turned to look upon
him--her face aglow with some high tenderness.

"Asleep?" she asked, her voice low, tremulous.

"Sound asleep."

"How do you know that he's asleep?" she pursued. "Asleep? No; he
ain't asleep." She paused--now woebegone. "He's wide awake--waiting,"
she went on. "He's waiting--just like he used to do--for me to come
in.... He's awake. Oh, sore little heart! He's lying alone in the
dark--waiting. And his mother will not come.... Last night, Jim, when
I come in, he was there in the bed, awake and waiting. 'Oh, mother,'
says he, 'I'm glad you're come at last. I been waiting so long. It's
lonesome here in the dark without you. And to-morrow I'll wake, and
wait, and wait; but you will not come!' He's awake, Jim. Don't you
tell me no different. The pillow's wet with his tears.... Lonely
child--waiting for me! Oh, little heart of my baby! Oh, sore little
heart!"

"Millie!"

"It ain't no use no more, Jim. You better go home. I'm all alone. My
child's not here. But--he's somewhere. And it's him I love."

The man sighed and went away....


Left alone, she put the little room in order and made the bed, blinded
by tears, her steps uncertain: muttering incoherently of her child,
whimpering broken snatches of lullaby songs. When there was no more
work left for her hands to do, she staggered to the bureau, and from
the lower drawer took a great, flaunting doll, which she had there
kept, poor soul! against the time when her arms would be empty, her
bosom aching for a familiar weight upon it. And for a time she sat
rocking the cold counterfeit, crooning, faintly singing, caressing it;
but she had known the warmth, the sweet restlessness, the soft,
yielding form of the living child, and could not be content.
Presently, in a surge of disgust, she flung the substitute violently
from her.

"It ain't no baby," she moaned, putting her hands to her face. "It's
only a doll!"

She sank limp to the floor. There she lay prone--the moonlight falling
softly upon her, but healing her not at all.


[Illustration: Tailpiece to _In the Current_]




[Illustration: Headpiece to _The Chorister_]




_THE CHORISTER_

The Rev. John Fithian lived alone with a man-servant in a
wide-windowed, sombre, red old house, elbowed by tenements, near the
Church of the Lifted Cross--once a fashionable quarter: now mean,
dejected, incongruously thronged, and fast losing the last appearances
of respectability. Sombre without--half-lit, silent, vast within: the
whole intolerant of frivolity, inharmony, garishness, ugliness, but yet
quite free of gloom and ghostly suggestion. The boy tiptoed over the
thick carpets, spoke in whispers, eyed the shadowy corners--sensitive
to impressions, forever alert: nevertheless possessing a fine feeling
of security and hopefulness; still wistful, often weeping in the night,
but not melancholy. Responsive to environment, by nature harmonious
with his new surroundings, he presently moved through the lofty old
rooms with a manner reflecting their own--the same gravity, serenity,
old-fashioned grace: expressing even their stateliness in a quaint and
childish way. Thus was the soil of his heart prepared for the seed of
a great change.


By and by the curate enlightened the child concerning sin and the
Vicarious Sacrifice. This was when the leaves were falling from the
trees in the park--a drear, dark night: the wind sweeping the streets
in violent gusts, the rain lashing