then investigate opposed its forfeiture; yet he shrank from its avowal. Balancing the pros and cons, as though of infinitessimal value, his trutinations were signally disarranged by an antiquated woman (and cloak, which might have flourished at the flood) crouching in the dyke. Amidst her eyes' lack-lustre, he could note the trace of recent, and the redness of long-protracted, fretting. Commiseration implicated, he queried her business in that trying location. It might have been the tone which attracted an upward glanceprecipitately re-shrouded beneath the diluvian over-all, with an indistinct jabber in a tongue now felicitously apocryphal. Emile-the more touched from discovering her garments (which might almost have been resolved into the heirloom aforesaid) to be inexplicably darned, and her whole personality that of an out-worn wayfarer-summoning another sentence towards reciprocal intelligence, the retort, though now vernacular, affected him perhaps stronglier than if fresh from the South-Sea.

"I'm a-doing no harm; but, were it God's will, I'd like to die peacefully here, for I'm a-weary of the world."

"But may-be I can aid you."

Spasmodically she straightened; thanked him eagerly, briefly; invoked some viewless blessing (which, by the bye, the benevolent are commonly enriched with) from a better sphere than that wherein Law benignly privileges the penurious broken-hearted to say as many prayers as they please, so they abstain from asking alms; "but," arresting, "it's no use, no use!" she muttered despairfully, and re-patronised the crouch.

Villiers re-insisted: "You must not take on. What is the worst ?"

She was dubious; but eventually shivered herself up; and then were manifest, from the thrown-back hood, features that might once have pretended to regularity if not engagingness; on which wrinkling Eld and pulverising Sorrow had since carved, remorselessly, their signs-manual.

"And you're sad, too, yourself, young gentleman," she uttered, queerly and not over-sanely scrutinising him; and then broke forth

"Who sow in tears, in joy shall reap;
The Lord shall comfort all that mourn;

Who now go on their way, and weep,
With joy they doubtless shall return!'

But it's no use-I should not make you sadder

-and after all, its odds, you're a-mockingno, no."

By dint of perseverance truly Calvinistic, he led her to a recital-which, were it supposable any of those hopefuls prone to the vicious practice too leniently designated "skipping" could have over-shot this history's insuperably commonplace vestibule even so far, would be recommended to their special perusal and unwontedly-taxed "inward digestion"-for causes which need not just now be chronicled.

The woman Olfords had been mother to four boys and a girl, tenants of a cottage barely discernible in the fields betwixt the moor's boundary and the road. "Being was" (the vagrant phrased it) "bliss:" her sons rose up hardy, her daughter comely, her husband worked -there was no cloud in their horizon. But the Fiend of Licentiousness stole thither; and the girl fell; and fled to hide disgrace. The solicitudes were overborne in an hour, and a shadow passed across that threshold.

of years

But her boys survived (was not the other dead "in trespass?")—and were mounting to hale manhood, and hiving integrity to compensate for the lost. And her motherly breast waxed glad, as

heretofore, beholding them. But the Angel of Fever flew down and set his mark in their foreheads; and, one by one, they melted into the grave-sparing the youngest for lonely memento

of the removed.

And Poverty laid his chill grip on their vitals. But strength and industriousness were the husband's, and his assiduity was untiring, but it availed not: employment was withheld-he was a dissenter: and he sunk into sullenness. From this, Desperation stabbed him, midst a wife's scalding tears, and a child's cries for food. He rambled the country, and was caught infringing the game-laws: resisted not, (imprisonment would have been sumptuous exchange !) but, lamed from a thorn, lagged upon his conductor, who quickened him with a cudgel-which he was not in mood to tolerate. He grasped it in the

struggle smote the captor. The indictment was, poaching and aggravated assault; and transportation the award. And the man who procured the father's conviction was the same who had dishonored the daughter.

"Gracious heaven !" cried Villiers, "can it be possible! What the villain's name?"

"That," said the woman, with haggard yet

reverential solemnity, "that I can disclose to none. I've sworn on the Holy Book; for, what could it, but breed more carnal hatred in my boy? And what does the Ancient of Days declare?

and

The carnal mind is enmity

Against the Lord that reigns on high,'

All they that battle with the sword,

Shall die thereby, he plights his word.''

There was a notable tincture of Methodism in the speaker, which alone might have qualified her for bearing these calamities.

But still a solace was vouchsafed in the boy; and she bowed before the Chastener. Times mended a little, and then pressed sorelier for the reprieve she could not obtain external relief, and was too proud to betake her to the Union, for the humble have bosoms just like the lofty, and the poor their pride and passions as the rich. So, Hunger stalked into their abode, and Misery cowered down a-by their hearth-stone. Temptation lifted the poison to her mouth, but the boy entreated piteously for a drink-and the cup was shattered as it slipped-and there was no

And