She was
outside of a miserable little hut, in the doorway of which stood two men.
For five or six years she had lived alone in that little hut.
It was a very poor place, but it kept out the wind and the rain and the
snow, and it was a home to her, and for the greater part of these years
in which she had lived there alone, she had received, at irregular and
sometimes long intervals, sums of money, often very small and never
large, from her son, who was a sailorman upon seas of which she did not
even know the name.
But for many months no money had come from this wandering son, and it was
very little that she had been able to earn. Sometimes she might have
starved, had it not been for the charity of others almost as poor as she.
As for rent, it had been due for a long time, and at last it had been due
so long that her landlord felt that further forbearance would be not only
unprofitable, but that it would serve as a bad example to his other
tenants. Consequently, he had given orders to eject the old woman from
her hut. She was now a pauper, and there were places where paupers would
be taken care of.
The old woman stood sadly shivering. Her poor old eyes, a little dimmed
with tears, were directed southward toward the far-away vanishing-point
of the rough and narrow road which meandered over the moor and lost
itself among the hills.
She was waiting for the arrival of a cart which a poor neighbor had
promised to borrow, to take her and her few belongings to the nearest
village, where there was a good road over which she might walk to a place
where paupers were taken care of.
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