The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• Sowers Not Reapers.
• Chapter I.: Midsummer Moonlight.
• Chapter II.: A Harvest Eve.
• Chapter III.: Fasters and Feasters.
• Chapter IV.: A Poor Man's Induction.
• Chapter V.: Taking Counsel.
• Chapter VI.: Too Late.
• Chapter VII.: The Breaking Up.
• Summary of Principles Illustrated In This Volume.
• Cinnamon and Pearls.
• Chapter I.: The Silent Trip.
• Chapter II.: A Mushroom City.
• Chapter III.: Morning In the Jungle.
• Chapter IV.: Night In the Jungle.
• Chapter V.: Maternal Economy.
• Chapter VI.: Blithe News.
• Chapter VII.: Up and Doing.
• Summary of Principles Illustrated In This Volume.
• A Tale of the Tyne.
• Chapter I: No News From the Port.
• Chapter II.: News From the Port.
• Chapter III.: Grown Children's Holiday.
• Chapter IV.: Epistolary Godliness.
• Chapter V.: Nothing But a Voice.
• Chapter VI.: Sleeping and Waking.
• Chapter VII.: Loyalty Preventives.
• Summary of Principles Illustrated In This Volume.

Chapter II.

NEWS FROM THE PORT.

Mrs. Eldred did not give too good an account of herself when she declared herself able to do for her family whatever circumstances might require of her. Within five days of her husband's disappearance, she might be found in a situation which she had not expected ever to fill again. She was sorting and screening coals at the mouth of the neighbouring pit. She would not hear of Effie joining her in her labours. Her great desire was that Effie should marry Walter as soon as she pleased. This would be one care off her mind, she declared,—one duty discharged to her absent husband, whose only daughter should not suffer by the unhappy chance which had taken him away. The only argument was as to what should be done with Tim, during working hours. Effie was for keeping him beside her, —not only at present, while she was still in her mother's cottage, but when she should have roved to Walter's. She thought it more seemly that the child should play among the flower-beds than among the coal-heaps, and hinted the posibihty, of his falling down the pit, or into the river, while no one was heeding him. But the plea of danger would not do. No child of his age could be more fit to avoid danger from the pit and the river than Tim. His ear served him better than the eyes of little ones who do not think of taking care; and Tim might always be trusted to discover, by stamping on the ground, how near he was to hollow places. He might always be trusted to calculate the certainties of crossing the waggon-way before the train should come up, and to find his own path down the sloping bank to the stone which formed Ins favourite seat by the river-side—where he might sit, and pull rushes, and hear the water ripple. His mother hinted that he would run more risk among Walter's bees than anywhere else. It was left, at last, to the child's own taste; and he decided to go with his mother. Of all people, he knew least of the hastiness of her temper; for he rarely or never had to feel it himself, and could not yet understand its manifestations to others. He was very fond of Effie, but there was a charm about the corner of his mother's apron which eclipsed all the blandishments of any one else. Besides this, Tim loved society,—not ouly as being a child, but as being blind. He quitted even the corner of his mother's apron when he heard young voices, and pushed into the midst of every group of children he could find his way to. He had an ambition to work as other little ones worked, and to play as they played; and his mother's occupation afforded him the opportunity. The sorting coal may be done by the touch as truly though more slowly than by the eye; and the work which Tim would not haw; been set to these five years, if he had had his sight, he was already permitted to do for amusement, because he was blind. His mother rectified his mistakes when he chanced to carry hie contributions to the wrong heap; and his companions learned to be patient with him when he unwittingly spoiled their little arrangements, throwing down their coal-houses, trodging straight through their coal-gardens, anti stumbling over their coal-mountains. No one seemed to enjoy the burning of the refuse coal more than he, though to him it was no spectacle. He always carefully ascertained the situation of the heap to be burned, and stood opposite to the conflagration, shouting when his companions' shouts told that the flame was spreading, and rather courting than avoiding the heat and the smoke. There was some question among observers whether the glare did not excite some sensation through the veil of his blindness. He could give no account of it himself; and the point was left to be decided at some future time, when he should be better able to understand his own pleasures.

Mrs. Eldred was at the pit, as if nothing had happened, the morning of Effie's marriage, with in a fortnight of Eldred's disappearance. There was nothing to stay at home for when Effie was gone; and no one ever shrank from being alone more painfully than the widowed wife did at present. She plied her labour busily at the pit's mouth,—now helping to receive the coal which was brought up by tim gin, now screening it, and depositing the large pieces for the London market in one place, and the small for other uses, or for destruction, in another place.

“Eh! bairn, what makes you turn that way, and listen so?” she asked of Tim. The boy jumped and clapped his hands as a distant shot arose. It spread nearer and nearer; and the sound of a carriage,—of several carriages,—was heard. What could it be? It turned out a very fine procession indeed,—the wedding-party in whose honour the bells of St. Nicholas, Newcastle, were ringing, as had been observed by several people about the colliery this morning. The Rev. Miles Otley, a neighbouring rector, had married the daughter of the rich Mr. Vivian of Newcastle; and everybody near was thinking a good deal about it,—not only because the marriage of the rector was a matter of real importance, but because it was a curious thing to the elderly folks to see such a boy as Miles Otley had but lately been, grown into so important a man as he now was. He had had extraordinary luck they thought, in respect both of education and preferment;—luck greatly exceeding that of Mr. Severn, his curate, who was much more popular on all points but one;—the one which constituted the rector's chief importance at present to the people about him. Mr. Otley's sporting was admired, his equipage praised, his preaching was a matter of question, his parties a matter of notoriety; but that which found him favour in the eves of his neighbours was his opposition to a scheme for a public work which they thought would do a great injury to their colliery,—a scheme of which Mr. Severn could not be brought to say any harm.

Some way up the coast there were materials for a colliery which would have been opened long ago, if it could have competed with those which had superior advantages of carriage. A waggon-way to the river, or at once to the port of Shields, might have been made; but it was thought likely to be less expensive, and much more advantageous to the whole district to make a short cut through the rock of the coast, just at hand, and build a small pier, to aid the loading and unloading of vessels. This opening might also afford a shelter for small vessels on a very exposed coast; and there seemed to impartial persons no conceivable objection to the undertaking, if the company who proposed it were satisfied that it would yield them a profit. There was a jealousy about it, how ever, among some coal-owners who did not desire the opening of new works; and this jealousy, of course, spread to their dependents. It was taken up by the gay young rector with an earnestness which could not be accounted for otherwise than that this was the first object out of himself which had ever been known to interest him, and it might therefore have the charm of a new pursuit. He had talked of getting the bill thrown out in Parliament, had visited the proprietors of the land in the line of the Deep Cur, to endeavour to gain their dissent from the measure, and had been thought to come very near the matter in the last sermon lie had preached (on innovations) previous to his marriage.

Mr. Severn was so far from seeing that the scheme was objectionable, that he firmly believed it would benefit all the parties concerned in its discussion. He knew that more coal was wanted in the south,—not that the people in the south could purchase more of the article, burdened as it now was with duties arid unnecessary charges of various kinds,—but he knew that many manufacturers were pining for want of an abundant and cheap supply of fuel, and that thousands of poor creatures were shivering in their chilly homes, while an inexhaustible deposit of coat lay in the ground; and there were plenty of hands to work it, and an abundance of ships to transport it, if its charges could but be reduced to such a level as that those who needed might obtain. Every means by which a larger supply could be brought into the market would prove, he believed, a stimulus to the whole trade, and tempt more consumers to the purchase. Not only, therefore, would the land proprietors on the line of the Deep Cut, and the labourers, and the ship builders, and the rope-makers, and the pitmen, be benefited in a direct way, but all connected with other coal-works in an indirect manner. It was true that other means existed of supplying the people move amply with the fuel which they wanted; but those means could not at present be made use of. it was true that coal enough,— and no little of a prime quality,—was destroyed at the pit mouth to afford warmth to crowds of those who pass tire dreary winter night in darkness and in cold, in many of the cities of England. It was true that this destruction was sorely grudged by the coal-owners, and corn plained of by the dwellers in the neighbourhood, to whom these wasteful fires were a terrible nuisance; but it was also true that, while the corporation of London had the privilege of measuring the coal which was to warm London, and would admit none which was not in large pieces, there was little probability that the small coal would have any chance yet awhile; and the best hope was in the supply of large coal being increased, so as to lower the price, as far as it was possible for it to be lowered under the officious management of a corporation. As for the means of carrying the projected improvement into effect, as it was a work too expensive for individual enterprise, a company, privileged by Government, seemed the right instrument. Such companies are the fitting subjects of royal and parhamentary favour, when their undertakings serve to promote instead of impeding the lndustry of the many, and the rewards of. that. industry. A company to monopolize the production of coal would have been a curse against which Mr. Severn would have protested with all his might; a company Lo open a new channel for the distribution of coal was a public servant, whom he thought deserving of all honour and encouragement, Inasmuch as government would be bound, by its duty of protecting the industry of its subjects, to discountenance the former, was bound to countenance the latter: therefore Mr. Severn exerted himself to subdue the prejudices against the scheme which existed in his parish: and, furthermore, did what in him lay to disabuse Parliament respecting the misrepresentations of the counter petitioners. It is so much more easy, however, and so infinitely more entertaining, to join in a clamour against a proposition than to listen to reason in favour of it, that Mr. Severn was not at all surprised to hear the shouts which followed the bridegroom's carriage,— “Otley for ever!” “He has cut up the Deep Cut?” “No new piers; the old ones will do.” “Don't let the Cut go out of your mind, Otley. We'll stand by you.”

Mr. Severn was visiting a poor man who was laid up with a hurt received m the p't. He turned to the window with a smile as the gay cavalcade passed, consisting of carriages, in which appeared to be all the relations of the bride, and half” those of the bridegroom. Her father, the great Mr. Vivian, perhaps struck the most awe into the beholders,—he was such a very great man!—though he himself seemed less aware of the fact than other people. He had once sat next the Duke of Wellington, and been asked a question by him. He had given a luncheon to the Duke of Northumberland; and the Duchess had taken his arm in the Assembly-room at Newcastle. He was a very powerful man in the Trinity-house; and had had an audience of the First Lord of the Admiralty once upon a time in London. Mr. Vivian himself would have been surprised to know what a great man he was. One sort of proof of the fact was now offered him, the surgeon of the colliery,— also a great man in his way,—arrived in the distance just in time to learn what an event was taking place on the road below, in the was of the bridal party. This gentleman had an earnest desire to be appointed surgeon to the Trinity-house, and had long wished to distinguish himself in the view of Mr. Vivian. He did so now, though not exactly in the way to secure a presentation to the office he sought. He urged his grey pony forward, that he might be within reach of Mr. Vivian's notice, if the carriages should stop to allow the rector to male his acknowledgments to the people. The pony did not want urging, except when it was in one peculiar position. of which it was by no means fond—in the middle of a waggon-way, bestriding the twirling cable by which the waggons are worked. While standing rims, as horses in that neighbourhood are sure to do occasionally, it required no gentle persuasion to induce the pony to draw its hind-legs after its fore-legs over the rope; but that effort once made, it was sure to go on its way rapidly enough to satisfy the most impatient rider. So it was on the present occasion. The animal leaped down the ridge, dashed over the black level which lay between it and the colliery, and ended by shaking off his master, and giving him a roll in the dust, in full view of the wedding party. The surgeon's purpose was doubly answered. Not only had he distinguished himself before Mr. Vivian, but the carriages stopped, and opportunity was thus afforded for requesting the patron's interest at the Trinity-house. Poor Mr. Milford was, however, too dusty, too much out of breath, too anxious about his runaway pony, to give a very clear account of his wishes and his claims; and the matter ended with his handing his card to the patron, and receiving permission to call on him in Newcastle.

Three men now appeared with the recovered pony, holding its head as carefully as if it was likely to start off without the rest of the body. Four women held open their doors, with an invitation to the gentleman to walk in, in order to being dusted and brushed; and a score of children gathered round to point out a torn coat-flap, a burst elbow, and a bent hat. Somewhat annoyed and ashamed, the gentleman turned into the house of the patient he came to visit, where Mr. Severn was still standing, looking upon the bustle before the door.

“Sit down, sir, pray do; and don't think of me yet,” said the patient, looking compassionately on the panting Mr. Milford. “My wife will get you a glass of gin, sir, to cheer your spirits.”

“And if,” said the wife, “you would take a word of advice, sir, you would turn your left-leg stocking, to prevent any more harm coming of the affair.”

Mr. Milford gravely accepted both the gin and the advice, It was a great object with him to make himself popular with, the people, even when the curate was by. He protested that he did not regard the nnsadventure, as it gave him the opportunity of paying his respects to the bridegroom, whom he honoured for his public spirit about the Deep Cut.

“When he was a lad at school,—and none of the brightest, sir,—how little anybody thought what a great man he would be in the church! It was his father's being ruined that destined him to the church. Nobody would have thought of it else.”

“Indeed! I should have supposed the long and expensive education necessary to a learned profession would have been the last a ruined man would have thought of for his son.”

“if he had had to pay the expense himself, certainly, sir. But so much is provided already for a church education, that, if a gentleman has interest, it is one of the cheapest ways that he can dispose of his sons, they say. But for this, they would never have thought of making Master Miles a clergyman, to judge by what I used to see of him as a boy. The big boys used to plague him, as he plagued the little ones; and the master and he plagued each other equally. If Miss Vivian had seen what I saw once, she would hardly have married him, altered as he is. The boys had buried him up to his chin in the middle of the play-ground, and when he screeched and roared, they let him have one arm out to beat the ground with. the did not then look much like a youth, thinking of giving himself up to holy things.”

“Nor many another school-boy, who has yet turned out a good clergyman,” observed Mr. Severn gravely. “I have often thought that much harm is done by expecting ministers of the gospel to be different from others when they are men; but I never before heard that they must be a separate race as boys.”

“Nor I, sir. I only mean that one would not expect a stupid boy, with a bad temper, to choose the church, if left to himself; and its being all settled just when his father fell into difficulties makes one doubt the more whether it was pure choice.”

“Certainly,” observed the surgeon, “there are helps to a clerical education which we, in other learned professions, should be very glad of;—a great many pensions, and exhibitions, and bursaries, and such things, which we poor surgeons never hear of.”

“These are all evidently designed,” Mr. Severn observed, “to provide for religion being abundantly administered in the land. It is piety which founded all these helps to a clerical education.”

“No doubt, sir; but that does not lessen the temptation to enter a profession where so much is ready to one's hand. It is plain to me, sir, that many are drawn into this department who would not otherwise think of it; and nothing will persuade me that they do not, so far, stand in the way of those whose hearts incline them to make the gospel their portion. I do not scruple saying this to you, Mr. Severn, because you are one of those who have not profited, but lost, by the plan. You will hardly deny, sir, that after all your toil and expense at college, one that cares less about his business than you has stepped into the living which you might have had if there had been no other rule of judging than fitness for the work.”

Mr. Severn could not allow this kind of remark, even from an old friend of his family. How was the broken arm? When did Mr. Mil-ford suppose the patient might be allowed to go to his work again?

“I beg your pardon, I am sure, sir,” observed the old friend of the family;” but I meant no offence to you or to Mr. Otley. All I was thinking of was, that in the church, as everywhere else, the best rule for having everything done well is ‘a fair stage and no favour;’ and, indeed, I know no case where favour is likely to do so much harm and so little good: for those that have their profession most at heart are just those who are most likely to struggle on, gleaning only what the favoured ones have left them, and giving up half the fruits of their labour to those who would not have thought of coveting them, if the piety of which you were speaking had not offered them a bribe.”

“I am afraid you think the gospel in a bad way in this country,” observed Mr. Severn.

“I am afraid of something worse,” interposed the surgeon: “I am afraid you are a dissenter, my good man.”

“By no means, sir. I am such a friend to the church, that it vexes me to see spurious labourers bribed into her, and true labourers shut out, or kept under. I believe that there is so much need of the gospel, that the need will always be naturally made known and supplied; and that it is only sported with when it is made a pretence for getting people on in the world who are much more fit to get on in inferior ways. I do not much admire the piety of those who call in strangers to take shepherds' hire, and doom the true pastor to be only a shepherd's dog.”

“A dog!” cried the surgeon, excessively scandalized. “My good man, consider what you are saying: it actually amounts to calling Mr. Severn a dog.”

“There are two ways of calling a man a dog,” observed. Mr. Severn, smiling: “the one in the sense of fidelity, and the other of brutishness. It is the compliment, and not the offence, that our friend means.”

“And there is a third sense,” pursued the old friend of the family. “The dog is fed from the leavings in his master's wallet, and who will say that the curates have any thing better for their care of the fold? Has not the law again and again ordered that the curate should be made at least equal in condition with the common mechanic? and has the law ever availed?—And why has it not? Not because the higher elergy are by nature a hard-hearted set of men; not because the people disregard the interests of the keepers of the fold; but because theirs is one of the cases which no law can reach. We should see the folly at once of the law ordering that every pitman should have good wages, if there were twice as many pitmen as there is a natural call for; but we wonder at the plight of our poor clergy while we tempt idle and foolish men into the profession, to engross the hire of those who take 20l. a year because they must starve if they waited for 100/.; though 100l. would be a grievously scanty recompense for the toil and expense of an education like theirs.”

“It would be all right if there were no dissenters,” observed the surgeon, who had now satisfied himself respecting the sit of his coat flap, which had been mended by the silent and thrifty hostess. “These dissenters are shocking people. They ought to be put down,—interfering with the church as they do,”

“Friend Christopher, over the water there, would tell you that the church interferes with the dissenters, seeing that they have two churches to support, while we have only one.”

“But only conceive how they interfere with the religious administration of the country! Do you mean to say that if all their dissenting clergy were swept off, there would, not be more room for our clergy?”

“As there is no reason to fear any such desolating plague as that must be which would sweep off so great a body of men,” observed the clergyman, “our endeavour should be to bring our operations into harmony with theirs, that———”

“Harmony with dissenters! And this from a clergyman!” cried Mr. Milford.

“Why opposition?” asked Mr. Severn. “To say nothing of the folly of opposition to a body which outnumbers ourselves, the times are past for men supposing that the interests of religion can be served by strife, or opinions changed by opposition. Since nobody thinks of getting the dissenters back into the church by fighting, it only remains for all professing Christians so to co-operate as that they may not interfere with each other, to the scandal of their common faith”

“If every church supported its own clergy, Mr. Milford, and if no one church held out inducements to double the number of clergy wanted——”

“But we hear perpetually that there are too few of the established clergy for the number of souls to be taken care of.”

“See it there would be, if every clergyman bv interest were transformed into a clergyman by choice. All I ask is, that there should be no interference in the matter,—no coming between the religious wants of the people and the mimstering to those wants;—whether that interference be on the part of government, or of a corporation, or of pious people who unconseiously curse the church as often as they offer a premium upon false pretension and interested service.”

“Come, come, my good patient, let me examine your aim, now I have recovered my breath a little. It will be a kindness to get you back to your wink in the pit, if this is the manner you talk when out of it. We shall have the rector coming to call you to account tor flat blasphemy.”

“Is it blasphemy to complain that Christ's church is not tended as Christ would have it? Is it blasphemy to point out how it is that he has not due honour? Is it——”

“No, no,” said Mr. Severn. “Mr. Milford knows, as few out of his profession can know, where dwells blasphemy, and where piety: in how few places the one; under how many roofs the other. He sees men under the severest trial,—that of varied suffering; and if the natural language of complaint sometimes meets his ear, he will tell you how much oftener looks of patience and words of resignation are to be found in the sick chamber. He knows that if you sometimes say what he may think unwise, you have not, in your suffering, given vent to that which is irreligious.”

Mr. Milford was ready to testify to his patient's Christian bearing under his late trial. When he spoke of blasphemy, it was only in the sense in which he often heard it used about those who speak against the church.

“One would think,” said Mr. Severn, “that if any were jealous for the church, it, should be myself, to whom the church is my all in every sense. Yet I deciare that what we are wont to call blasphemy is much seldomer any irreverence to God than discontent with man's doings. As soon as any of man's established ways of honouring God are found to be faulty, the cry of blasphemy is raised against the fault-finder, though the glory of God may be his aim as well as his plea. It was once blasphemy to blame the Pope. it is now blasphemy to hint that poor curates might be better used. This sort of blasphemy may now, however, be found in every other house within these realms; while the real blasphemy is rare, very rare. Milford, how many blasphemers have you met with among your patients? I, for my part, never saw one,—out of the gin-shop. Within it, two legged creatures are no longer men, however they may still use their tongues to bless or curse at haphazard.”

Mr. Milford tried to recollect. He could remember only two instances;—one of a man in the extremity of pain, suddenly blinded by a horrible accident in the pit. This was no case, as sanity was lost for the time: but it made the beholder's blood run cold so that no other such instance could ever occur without his remembering it, he was sure. The other was also a case of agony,—of the agony of disappointed hope. A very poor man, with a sick wife, had been promised work, and the promise was broken. He reviled heaven and earth when he saw his wife sinking from want. But at the first moment of her revival he repented, and the last of his sorrows to be got over, was remorse for his impiety.

“You would find it less easy to reckon the cases of piety you meet with, in and out of the pale of the church.”

“There are so many degrees of piety, one hardly likes to say that any body is wholly without. It is my lot to be much with sufferers; and while there are some aged folks, and strong men laid low, who give themselves much to psalms and prayers, it is rare to meet with parents who do not tell their children that it is God's hand which is upon them for good, or with children who do not more or less strive to lie still under their sickness, ‘like a dumb lamb before the shearer,’ as their parents say.—There is one such, sir, one of those patient little ones,—as you can testify, for I know you have held him in your arms for many a half hour.”

“What! little Tim? I have often wondered, hat is passing in that poor child's mind, when he has lain breathing his feverish breath on my bosom. Other children, while thus lying still from feebleness, turn their eyes from the clock to the kitten, and from the flickering fire to follow their mothers' or sisters' doings about the house. This child's eyes roll in vain, but not the less patiently does he watch his pain away. I often wonder what is working in his little mind.”

“The thought of my pony will work in his mind the next time he is ili, I fancy,” observed Milford. “Do but see how he pats him, and feels out the mane, while his mother lifts him up?”

The hostess remarked that the best smiles seen on Mrs. Eldred's face of late had been won from her by this little lad.

Mr. Milford gave Mr. Severn leave to indulge the child with a ride backwards and forwards, while he finished his business with his patient. Mr. Eldred could not be persuaded to make herself quite easy about the pony's quietness, and go back to her work. She lingered, and turned, and watched, as the animal sauntered to and fro, with a man at the bead, a dozen boys at the heels, Mr. Severn holding on little Tim, and Tim himself now quietly laughing, now encouraging his steed as he heard others do, and for ever turning his head from side to side, as if gathering by that motion all the floating sounds which could tell him what was passing.

A sound soon came rushing instead of floating through the air, so vehement as to make the sell restless pony rear bolt upright, jerking the child into Mr. Severn's arms, and calling upon the man at the head for all his energies. The cry, loud as it was, came from some distance,—from the spout or staithe where a waggon was at the moment being emptied into a keel. A crowd soon collected on the spot and it became certain that the shouts were of a joyous character There was talk of “the gang,” “the tender,” “the pressed men”; but the tone was one of triumph, and cries of “Welcome!” were intermingled.—Mrs. Eldred heard part, and believed every thing,—every thing that in another moment would have been absurd,—that the king had had mercy upon her,—(as if, alas! he knew her heart-sorrow;) that peace was made on purpose to restore a father to her children; that Eldred had bid successful defiance to the gang, and was upheld by the whole people; that the world had been, somehow or other, turned upside down for her sake. She pushed her way, with an exulting countenance, among the crowd. She met Ned Etliott, the lame pitman, and passed him by; and she passed by several other returned captives:—Croley, with the weak right arm, and Pullen, the sickly steersman, and Gilbert, the half idiot, who was allowed to lounge about the works. All these she pushed past, and, from the extreme end of the little pier, looked down into the boat which had landed them. There was no one else. Eldred was neither a cripple, nor sickly, nor foolish; he was of the first order of labourers, and therefore snatched from his voluntary occupation, and made a slave. Most who had leisure to observe their heart-stricken neighbour gazed in silence; but the half idiot snapped his fingers, and blurted out that her husband was far down towards the south by this time, but he sent his love, and——

With a long moan,—the cry which conveys a refusal to endure, the poor woman pushed her informant from her with a force which startled him. She wrenched hands, shoulder, apron, from all who would have held her to comfort her, and cast herself against one of the waggons.— not to wrestle with her sorrow, but to let herself be overcome by it. Mr. Severn and one or two others kept themselves in readiness to aid her when it should not be an insult to speak to her. Her passion was moving,—but far less so than that of another sufferer who silently walked away with face unhidden, and steady step,—unable to join in the feelings of those about her, but not expecting them to regard hers. She quickened her pace, but showed no sign of anger when laughter overtook her,—noisy mirth which her heart loathed.

“A fine bargain his Majesty had of your Eighteen pounds a piece you cost him. I Wish him joy of you.”

“They might have let us have some of it, though.”

“Never mind that, now you are back. Come, lads, wish the king joy of catching cripples at eighteen pounds a piece, just to be let go again!”

“I wish the gang may be within hearing. Give them a shout, lads! Now for it!”

“Whisht! whisht! O whisht! I cannot bear it!” shrieked the miserable wife, “O, you barbarous———you mocking wretches———O, whisht, I tell ye!”

Shrill as her voice was, it was not heeded by many, who were all too much used to its shrillness. Her fellow sufferer regarded it, and turned back to beckon her away.

“Leave them alone! They don't heed. Why should they?

“Heed! Nobody heeds me. Nobody ever cared for me but one, and he is snatched from me. Nobody heeds me.——”

Something fumbling with her apron caught her attention at this moment. Little Tim clung to her knees, trembling, and his face convulsed, as she had seen it before, when her voice took a certain tone, of which she was not otherwise conscious. She parted his hair on his forehead, lifted the child, and put his passive arms around her neck, and went home as mute as he.