Lost Gip by Hesba Stretton

IT was strange how the thought of little Gip took possession of John Shafto's mind. The winter days, dark and cold, had fairly set in, and he could not creep along the streets with his crutches, looking wistfully at the ragged children whom he found in numbers about them. Yet if the summer warmth had filled the air, he could no longer have gone in search of her, for the little strength remaining to him was slowly ebbing away; and he was surely going down to the grave, the dark passage through which he was to reach his Father's house beyond.

But he scarcely seemed to feel the painful steps of the journey he was making, so full was his mind of little Gip. Perhaps it was because he and Sandy talked of little else; or because there was always a faint vague hope in his heart that when Sandy came in from his work in an evening, he would bring the joyful news that Gip was found. With this hope stirring in him, he never missed watching for Sandy's return; and when the usual hour would come, he turned the gas in the shop window higher, so that Sandy might see his face looking out beside the hatchment as soon as he turned into the grave-yard.