The Golden Shoemaker

In a small house in a back street in the large manufacturing town of Cottonborough the young wife of Cobbler Horn lay dying. It was the dusk of a wild evening in early winter; and the cruel cough which could be heard every now and then in the lulls of the wind from the room upstairs gave deepening emphasis to the sad fact that the youthful wife and mother-for such also she was-had fallen a victim to that fell disease which sweeps away so much of the fair young life of our land. Cobbler Horn himself was engaged just now in the duties of his calling in the little workshop behind the kitchen. The house was very small. The kitchen and workshop were the only rooms downstairs and above them were three small chambers. The one in which the dying woman lay was over the workshop and the sound of her coughing came down with sharp distinctness through the boarded floor which was the only ceiling of the lower room.