TWO LITTLE WOODEN SHOES. heads and their failing eyesight, and the chil- dren dropped great tears on the bobbins, be- cause they had come out without a crust to break their fast. She had been sad there often for others, but she had never been dull—not with this unfa- miliar, desolate, dreary dullness, that seemed to take all the mirth out of the busy life around her, and all the color out of the blue sky above. Why, she had no idea herself. She wondered if she were going to be ill; the had never been ill in her life, being strong as a little bird that has never known cage or captivity. When the day was done, Bébée gave a quick sigh as she looked across the square. She had so wanted to tell him that she was not ungrate- ful; and she had a little moss-rose ready, with a sprig of sweet-brier, and a tiny spray of maiden-hair fern that grew under the willows, which she had kept covered up with a leaf of sycamore all the day long. No one would have it now. The child went out of the place sadly, as the carillon rang. There was only the moss-rose in her basket, and the red and white currants that had been given her for her dinner. She went along the twisting, many-colored, quaintly-fashioned streets, till she came to the water-side. It is very ancient there still; there are all manner of old buildings, black and brown and gray, peaked roofs, gabled windows, arched doors, crumbling bridges, twisted galleries leaning to touch the dark surface of the canal, dusky wharves crowded with barrels,, and bales, and cattle, and timber, and all the va- rious freightage that the good ships come and go with all the year round, to and from the Zuyder-Zee, and the Baltic water, and the wild Northumbrian shores, and the iron-bound Scot- tish headlands, and the pretty gray Norman seaports, and the white sandy dunes of Hol- land, with the toy towns and the straight pop- "l«ir trpps Bébée' was fond of watching the brigs and barges, that looked so big to her, with their national flags flying, and their tall masts stand- ing thick as grass, and their tawny sails flapping in the wind, and about them the sweet, strong smell of that strange, unknown thing, the sea. Sometimes the sailors would talk with her; sometimes some old salt, sitting astride of a cask, would tell her a mariner's tale of far-away lands and mysteries of the deep; sometimes some curly-headed cabin-boy would give her a shell or a plume of sea-weed, and try and make her understand what the wonderful wild water was like, which was not quiet and sluggish and dusky as this canal was, but was forever chang- ing and moving, and curling and leaping, and making itself now blue as her eyes, now black as that thunder-cloud, now white as the snow that-the winter wind tossed, now pearl-hued and opaline as the convolvulus that blew in her own garden. And Bébée would listen, with the shell m her lap, and try to understand, and gaze at the ships and then at the sky beyond them, and try to figure to herself those strange countries to which these ships were always going, and saw in fancy all the blossoming orchard province of green France, and all the fir-clothed hills and rushing rivers of the snow-locked Swedish shore, and saw too, doubtless, many lands that had no place at all except in dream-land, and were more beautiful even than the beauty of the earth, as poets' countries are, to there own sorrow oftentimes. But this dull day Bébée did not go down upon the wharf; she did not want the sailors' tales; she saw the masts and bits of bunting that streamed from them, and they made her restless, which they had never done before. Instead she went in at a dark old door and climbed up a steep staircase that went up and up, as though she were mounting St. Gudule's belfry towers; and at the top of it entered a lit- tle chamber in the roof, where one square un- glazed hole that served for light looked out upon the canal, with all its crowded craft, from the dainty schooner-yacht, fresh as gilding and holystone could make her, that was running for pleasure to the Scheldt, to the rude, clumsy coal-barge, black as night, that bore the rough diamonds of Belgium to the snow-buried roofs of Christiania and Stromstad. In the little dark attic there was a very old woman in a red petticoat and a high cap, who sat against the window, and pricked out lace patterns with a pin, on thick paper. She was eighty-five years old, and could hardly keep fcody and soul together. Bébée running to her, kissed her. "Oh, mother Annémie, look here! Beauti- ful red and white currants, and a roll; I saved them for you. They are the first currants we have seen this year. Me? oh, for me, I have eaten more than are good! You know I pick fruit like a sparrow, always. Dear mother An- némie are you better? Are you quite sure you are better to-day?" The little old withered woman, brown as a walnut and meagre as a rush, took the cu a watterlogged brig, and her hull riven in two, and her crew all drowned and dead beyond any manner of doubt. And on her stern there was her name painted white, the Fleur d'Epme, of Brussels, as plain as name could be- and that was all we ever knew : what evil had struck her, or how they had perished, nobody ever told. Only the coaster brought that bit of beam away, with the Fleur d'Epine writ clear upon it. But you see I never know my man is dead. Any day—who can say ?—any one of those ships may walnut and meagre as a rush, took tne cur : uay—wuu ran w .—- «uj v^» „_™__r__, rants and smiled^ with a childish glee, and be- , bring him aboard of her, and he may leap out oa 1