been an' done a foolish thing; I've promised to take charge of poor Mrs P——'s gal." I think I see him, innocent of coat and waistcoat, his shirt-sleeves tucked up, his grimy, brawny arms akimbo on his broad chest, his round genial face^beaming through the soot which envelops it, like the sun shining through a mirky atmosphere, looking down on his pale, anxious wife, and replying cheerily, "Not I, mother; don't you be afeerd; if you don't mind the trouble, I'm willing enough." So they took the little orphan into their own family, though her father lived in the town, and could earn enough to keep her himself if he would. Such people are deeply needed in these out-of-the-world spots. Calamities happen which no poor-law, no organized system of charity, could adequately relieve,—nothing, in fact, but the consoling sympathy of brotherly kindness arising from such simplehearted faith in a loving God and Saviour, as just described.
In my perambulations about the district I met with a woman whose strange, familiar way of speaking and half-distraught manner seemed to compel me to listen to her. Her story wore an air of exaggeration and a tone of imposture, but I was afterwards assured on the best authority that there was no reason for doubting that she spoke the truth.
"It's three year," she said, "sin' I buried my husband; a kinder man never breathed. He'd been out all day surveying, and when he came home at night I said, 'Now, dear, let me make you some tea.' 'No,' said he, 'Em'ly dear; I have had a good tea, never ate more heartily in my life, yet for all that I didn't seem to have enough; I'll go to bed.' As he passed through the children's bed-room he kissed them all, and said, 'Jesus bless you, my little lambs;' and then he promised one should have a little present for her womanly ways. When he laid down we kissed each other, and he said, 'Good-night, Em'ly dear; if I lie on my left side, you'll turn me, won't you? 'I never woke till morning, and then I heard him making a strange noise. I started up and turned him, but he was quite blue; I rose him in my arms, called for a glass of water, but he fell forward and died. I was quite incautious until the inquest.
