The woman, who lay upon a coarse chaff pallet in the corner, was one who once might have been pretty. Her skin was fair, her hair soft and curling, her eyes of a beautiful blue, her hands thin and transparent as pearl. But the deep, dark circles under the eyes, the thin, white lips, the attenuated limbs, the hurried breathing, and the burning spots in the cheek, told that, whatever she might have been, she was now not long for this world.

Beside her bed was sitting an old negro, in whose close-curling wool age had begun to sprinkle flecks of white. His countenance presented, physically, one of the most uncomely specimens of negro features; and would have been positively frightful, had it not been redeemed by an expression of cheerful kindliness which beamed from it. His face was of ebony blackness, with a wide, upturned nose, a mouth of portentous size, guarded by clumsy lips, revealing teeth which a shark might have envied. The only fine feature was his large, black eyes, which, at the present, were concealed by a huge pair of plated spectacles, placed very low upon his nose, and through which he was directing his sight upon a child's stocking, that he was busily darning. At his foot was a rude cradle, made of a gum-tree log, hollowed out into a trough, and wadded by various old fragments of flannel, in which slept a very young infant. Another child, of about three years of age, was sitting on the negro's knee, busily playing with some pine-cones and mosses.

The figure of the old negro was low and stooping; and he wore, pinned round his shoulders, a half-handkerchief or shawl of red flannel, arranged much as an old woman would have arranged it. One or two needles, with coarse, black thread dangling to them, were stuck in on his shoulder; and as he busily darned on the little stocking, he kept up a kind of droning intermixture of chanting and talking to the child on his knee.

"So, ho, Teddy!—bub dar!—my man!—sit still!—cause yer ma's sick, and sister's gone for medicine. Dar, Tiff'll sing to his little man.

'Christ was born in Bethlehem,

Christ was born in Bethlehem,

And in a manger laid.'

Take car, dar!—dat ar needle scratch yer little fingers!—poor little fingers! Ah, be still, now!—play wid yer pretty tings, and see what yer pa'll bring ye!"

"Oh, dear me!—well!" said the woman on the bed, "I shall give up!"

"Bress de Lord, no, missis!" said Tiff, laying down the stocking, and holding the child to him with one hand, while the other was busy in patting and arranging the bedclothes. "No use in givin' up! Why, Lord bress you, missis, we'll be all up right agin in a few days. Work has been kinder pressin', lately, and chil'ns clothes an't quite so 'speckable; but den I's doin' heaps o' mendin'. See dat ar!" said he, holding up a slip of red flannel, resplendent with a black patch, "dat ar hole won't go no furder—and it does well enough for Teddy to wear rollin' round de do', and such like times, to save his bettermost. And de way I's put de yarn in dese yer stockings an't slow. Den I's laid out to take a stitch in Teddy's shoes; and dat ar hole in de kiverlet, dat ar'll be stopped 'fore morning. Oh, let me alone!—he! he! he!—Ye didn't keep Tiff for nothing, missis—ho, ho, ho!" And the black face seemed really to become unctuous with the oil of gladness, as Tiff proceeded in his work of consolation.