affairs of the nation, he was a beggar. He saw himself set aside among the frequenters of the Crown, his political opinions ignored, his sarcasms shorn of their point. Knowing his poverty and misfortune, the men who had stood in awe of him would begin to suspect him of needing their assistance and would avoid him accordingly.
"It's human natur'," he said. "No one loikes a dog wi' th' mange, whether th' dog's to blame or no. Th' dog may ha' getten it honest. 'Tis na th' dog, it's the mange as foakes want to get rid on."
"Providence?" said he to the Rector, when that portly consoler called on him. "It's Providence, is it? Well, aw I say is, that if that's th' ways o' Providence, th' less notice Providence takes o' us, th' better."
His remarks upon his first appearance at The Crown among his associates, after the occurrence of the misfortune, were even more caustic and irreverent. He was an irreverent old sinner at his best, and now Sammy was at his worst. Seeing his crabbed, wrinkled old face drawn into an expression signifying defiance at once of his ill luck and worldly comment, his acquaintances shook their heads discreetly. Their reverence for him as a man of property could not easily die out. The next thing to being a man of property, was to have possessed worldly goods which had been "made away wi'," it scarcely mattered how. Indeed even to have "made away wi' a mort o' money" one's self, was to be regarded a man of parts and of no inconsiderable spirit.
"Yo're in a mort o' trouble, Sammy, I mak' no doubt," remarked one oracle, puffing at his long clay.
"Trouble enow," returned Sammy, shortly, "if you ca' it trouble to be on th' road to th' poor-house."
"Aye, indeed!" with a sigh. "I should think so. But
