Barbara.--She had sunk about as low as any woman could when we found her.From the age of eighteen,when her parents had forced her to throw over her sailor sweetheart and marry a man with "good prospects,"she had been going steadily down.
She did not love her husband,and soon sought comfort from the little public-house only a few steps from her own door.Quarrels in her home quickly gave place to fighting,angry curses,and oaths,and soon her life became one of the most wretched in the place.Her husband made no pretence of caring for her,and when she was ill and unable to earn money by selling fish in the streets,he would go off for a few months,leaving her to keep the house and support herself and babies as best she could.Out of her twenty years of married life,ten were spent in these on-and-off separations.And so she got to live for only one thing--drink.It was life to her;and the mad craving grew to be irresistible.The woman who looked after her at the birth of her child refused to fetch her whisky,so when she had done all she could and left the mother to rest,Barbara crept out of bed and crawled slowly down the stairs over the way to the tap-room,where she sat drinking with the baby,not yet an hour old,in her arms.So things went on,until her life got so unbearable that she determined to have done with it.Taking her two eldest children with her,she went down to the bay,and deliberately threw them both into the water,jumping in herself after them."Oh,mither,mither,dinna droon me!"wailed her little three-year-old Sarah,but she was determined and held them under the water,till,seeing a boat put out to the rescue she knew that she was discovered.Too late to do it now,she thought,and,holding both children,swam quickly back to the shore.A made-up story about having fallen into the water satisfied the boatman,and Barbara returned home dripping and baffled.But little Sarah did not recover from the shock,and after a few weeks her short life ended,and she was laid in the Cemetery.