Sally, walking about the streets the next morning, with her baby in her arms, was aware that a critical change in her prospects was impending, which threatened to separate her and the child who was now part of her life; and as far as such a mite as she can be said to determine, she resolved that such a separation should never take place. She would run away into the wide, wide world.

She set off at as good a pace as her little legs could achieve, but the child she carried was no light weight for one of her tender years, and before she had extricated herself from the labyrinth of courts, alleys, and narrow streets which intersected Rosemary Lane, she was exhausted. Leaning against the wall, she looked up to the sky with a sad and weary face. She had never forgotten the beautiful dream she had dreamt on the night of her brother's return, and it now recurred to her, bringing with it a dim hope that something wondrous might happen to aid her in her difficulty. If she had been acquainted with the history of Jack and his Beanstalk, she would have audibly wished for a tree--up which she could climb into a kinder land than Rosemary Lane. But although no miracle brought light to Sally's troubled soul, something happened which seemed to her very wonderful.

She had halted immediately before a cobbler's stall, and the face she saw as she looked down to earth was that of Seth Dumbrick the cobbler--no other, indeed, than the cobbler who in Sally's dream had appeared to her in the clouds, mending boots and shoes for the angels. Here was the realisation of Sally's dim hope. Fancies of grand processions and magic trees and angels in the clouds thronged her mind, revolving around two central figures--the sweet figure of her beautiful child, and the strange one of this queer-looking cobbler whose chin had not met razor's edge for a week.

Seth Dumbrick, observing Sally's agitation, and also attracted by the children, paused in his work, and spoke to Sally. She did not hear the words, but the voice of the man was kind, and that was sufficient to give colour to her hope.

"O Mr. Dumbrick," she exclaimed, pressing her hands to her breast, and gazing upon the cobbler with eyes open to their fullest extent. "It was you I dreamt of--it was you!"

"Ah, Sally," was Seth Dumbrick's calm comment, "it was me you dreamt of, eh? What sort of a dream?"

"Oh," cried Sally, "so good--so beautiful!"

"Tell me the dream," said Seth.

Sally gave him a practical reply. "I am so tired, and so hungry! And so's my baby."

Seth's eyes wandered to the baby, who was staring at him solemnly.

"Yours?" he gravely asked of Sally.

"Mine," as gravely answered Sally, with an emphatic nod.

A smile passed over the cobbler's lips. His stall was curiously built in front of a flight of steps leading down to a cellar, in which he lived, and as he sat at work on his platform his face was almost on a level with the pavement. Now, as Sally made reference to her tired and hungry condition, she peered into this cellar. It was dark and safe. If she and her baby could hide there, no one in the world would be able to separate them.

"May I come in?" she begged.

"Come along," said Seth.

There was room on the platform for the children, and Sally, with her baby, joyfully squeezed in, and nestled in the corner, where they could see and be seen by the cobbler, but were almost quite hidden from the passers-by in the street. Seth Dumbrick then, reaching out his hand, opened a little cupboard on his right, and taking from it a loaf of bread, cut two thick slices, over which he spread a careful layer of dripping from a yellow basin. Sprinkling these liberally with salt, he gave them to the children, and proceeded with his work while they ate.

Every movement he made was watched with admiration by Sally, and the disclosure of the cupboard containing food was to her something almost magical.

Seth Dumbrick was a character in the neighbourhood. Not a person in Rosemary Lane was on visiting terms with him, and the children, as they passed and repassed, were in the habit of casting longing looks into the dark shadows of the cellar which had never yet received a guest, and which was popularly supposed to contain rare and precious deposits. The circumstance of his having been seen at various times carrying bottles and jars with living creatures in them imparted an additional interest to his habitation. He was never seen in a public-house or a place of worship.

Everything in this man's face was on a grand scale: there was not a mean feature in it. His lips were full and powerful, his nose was large and of a good shape, his great grey eyes had in them a light and depth which were not easily fathomed, and but for his forehead, which hung over his eyebrows like a precipice, he would have been a well-looking man. But this forehead was of so monstrous a bulk that it engrossed the attention of the observer, and except to those with keen and penetrating insight, destroyed all harmony of feature in the face of the man. His flesh was not over clean; his hands were as hard as horn; he had a week's bristles on his chin, and an old red nightcap on his head.

Before the children had finished their slices of bread-and-dripping, Seth, bending forward, took Sally's boots from her feet, and examined them. They were in sad need of repair, and without a word, Seth began to patch and hammer away at them. Sally's eyes glistened with grateful pleasure.

"And now about that dream of yours, Sally," said Seth Dumbrick, as Sally, after partaking of the last mouthful of bread, wiped her lips with her hand. "Did I have a gold-laced hat and silk stockings on?"

"Oh, no," replied Sally, screwing up her lips, "only you was setting on a stool, mending shoes--as you're doing now."

"Well, that's not much of a dream, Sally. You could dream that dream over again this minute, with your eyes wide open."

"No, I couldn't--no, I couldn't!" protested Sally, with a vigorous shake of her head. "You don't know!"

"Well, go on; I was sitting here mending shoes----"

"No, no," interrupted Sally, "you wasn't sitting here."

"Where, then."

"There!" said Sally, pointing with her finger upwards to the sky.

"There!" echoed Seth, with a startled look, following the line of Sally's finger.

"And angels was flying all about you, and it was their shoes you was mending."

And then Sally related the whole of her dream as circumstantially as it was in her power to do. The narration occupied some time, and at its conclusion Sally's face was red with excitement, and an expression of interest was in Seth Dumbrick's features.

"And I was putting a pair of shining slippers on the feet of this little thing," he said, taking the baby in his arms. "I didn't know you had a little sister, Sal."

"I ain't got none; she ain't my sister--she's my baby."

Seth Dumbrick, holding himself aloof from his neighbours, and not being given to idle chatterings, knew none of the particulars of the child's introduction to Rosemary Lane, and he now learnt them for the first time from Sally's lips.

"Poor little castaway!" he said.

"She wasn't dressed like this when she first come," said Sally.

"No! How then?"

"She had nice things, better than I ever seed."

"What's become of 'em?"

"Pawnbroker's," tersely replied Sally.

"Ah! and you've no idea who or where the pretty little creature's mother is?"

"She never had a mother."

"That's not according to nature, Sally. A mother she must have had."

"No; she had a ma, not a mother. I knew she wasn't like us the first moment I ever see her. That was the night brother Ned come home, and me and baby went to bed together. Then I dreamed that dream of you and the angels. Wasn't it a beautiful dream?"

"It was a rare fine dream, Sally, a rare fine dream! Angels! and Seth Dumbrick a-working for 'em! that's the finest part of it. Seth Dumbrick sitting in the sky, with angels begging of him to mend their shoes! And I'll do it too--when I get there. I'll set up as a cobbler in the clouds, and make my fortune. Ha, ha, ha! Sally, go on dreaming like that, and something'll come of it."

"What'll come of it?" asked literal Sally.

Seth Dumbrick rubbed his chin with his horny hand. The bristles were so strong, and his hand was so hard, that the action produced a rasping sound, such as the rubbing of sand-paper produces.

"There was a woman once, Now her name was Southcott--Joanna Southcott it was. Now she was a poor woman, too, as you'll be."

Sally nodded. She had never bestowed the slightest thought upon the matter, but if she had made it the subject of the most serious contemplation she could have had no other expectation than that of a certainty she would be a poor woman all her life.

"Joanna had dreams, and prophesied. She dreamt of angels and the devil, and had a fight with the devil."

"Did she run away from him, and did he run after her," inquired Sally, almost breathless with excitement, for in her mind at that moment the devil stood for the new tenant who, in her own dream, had tried to destroy her treasure-baby.

"That's not told," answered Seth Dumbrick.

"But she beat him!" suggested Sally, with her little hands tightly clasped.

"She beat him bad, did Joanna. My mother--she was a Devonshire woman, like Joanna--believed in her, and so did a heap of others. And now I come to think of it," said Seth, with a musing glance at the pretty child lying on his leather apron, "there's something strange in Joanna Southcott's name coming into my head in this way. For, you see, Sal, when Joanna was an old woman, she gave out that she was going to be brought to bed with a Prince of Peace; but she never was, more's the pity, for that's the very Prince the world wants badly, and never yet has been able to get. She used to go into trances, used Joanna, and prophesy."

"Tell me," said Sally.

"About 'em? Well, there were so many! She was always at it."

"What's trances?" asked Sally, with feverish excitement, "and what's prophecy?"

"Well, Joanna'd be sitting as you're sitting now, when all at once she'd go off--fall back or forward, insensible. That would be a trance. Then she'd dream something. Then she'd come to, and tell what she dreamt. That'd be a prophecy."

" I do that!" cried Sally, in a fever of excitement. " I fall back and faint dead away--dead away! For a long time. And I don't know nothing that goes on all the time. Oh, my! But I ain't begun to prophesy yet, that I knows on. Tell me, what is prophecy?"

"Something that comes true, or is likely to come true. Now, here and there your dream's a good deal like some of Joanna's dreams. She was a prophetess; my mother had some of her writings. Fine writings, promising fine things. You look out, Sally. You keep on dreaming and fainting dead away, and some day perhaps you'll prophesy."

Sally nodded. Her eyes were full of fire, her little lips were parted in wonder, and in her childish mind strange and yearning hopes and cunning designs were beginning to stir.

"That dream of yours," proceeded Seth Dumbrick, in all ea............