very satisfactory. She was, in fact, obliged to seek for consolation, for the present, in the belief, which she struggled hard to impress firmly upon herself, that the boy's illness had arisen wholly in consequence of his sitting on the ground so late in the evening to write his letter; and that his subsequent sousing in the horse-trough had no connexion whatever with it; as he might very easily have fallen accidentally into a river instead, and received no more harm from it than he had from the aforesaid pumping.

During several subsequent days, the boy continued in such a state as filled his mistress's heart with continual apprehensions lest her house should eventually be troubled with his corpse. About his death, considering that event solely by itself, she cared very little; he might live or die, just as his constitution inclined him, for aught she would choose between the two; only, in case he should not survive, it would annoy her very much indeed to have all the trouble of getting another body's corpse prepared for the ground, without, in all likelihood, ever receiving from Mrs. Clink a single halfpenny in return for it. She mentioned her apprehensions to Mr. Palethorpe, who replied, that it was all silly childishness to allow herself to be imposed on by her own good feelings, and that talk about humanity would never do for folks so far north as they were. On this unquestioned authority Miss Sowersoft would inevitably have acted that very day, and removed our hero, at any risk, to Bramleigh, in order to give him a chance of dying comfortably at home, had not fortune so ordered it, that, while preparations were being made for taking him from a bed of fever into an open cart which stood ready in the yard, Dr. Rowel chanced to ride up, and at once put his veto upon their proceedings. Not that the doctor would by any means have purposely ridden half the distance for the sake of such a patient; but as chance not unfrequently favours those whom their own species despise, it happened that his professional assistance had that afternoon been required in the case of a wealthy old lady in the neighbourhood; and, as the doctor's humanity was not, at all events, so very short-legged as not to be able to carry him one quarter of a mile when it lay in his way, he took Snitterton Lodge in his circuit, for the sake of seeing Master Colin.

It will readily be supposed that during these few days, (as the boy had not made his appearance at home on the previous Sunday, according to conditional promise,) both his mother and Fanny had almost hourly been expecting to hear from him. Nor had various discussions on the cause of his silence been by any means omitted. Mrs. Clink attributed it to the fact of his having found everything so very pleasant at Snitterton Lodge, that he really had had neither time nor inclination to wean himself for a few short hours from the delights with which he was surrounded; but Fanny, whose mind had been dwelling ever since

his departure upon the dismal forebodings with which Miss Sowersoft's appearance had filled it, expressed to Mrs. Clink her full belief that something had happened to Colin, or he would never have neglected either to come himself, or to write, as he had promised.

"I am sure," she continued, very pensively, "it has made me so uneasy all this last week, that I have dreamed about him almost every night. Something has happened to him, I am as certain as if I had seen it; for I can trust to Colin's word just as well as though he had taken his oath about it. However, I will walk over this afternoon and see; for I shall never rest until I know for a certainty."

"Walk, fiddlesticks!" exclaimed Mrs. Clink. "If you go over there in that suspicious manner, as though you fancied they had murdered him, it is a hundred to one but you will affront Miss Sowersoft, and get Colin turned out of a situation that may be the making of him. Stay where you are-do; and if you cannot make anything, do not mar it by interfering in a matter that you know nothing about. I have had trouble enough with him one way or another, without his being brought back on my hands, when he is as comfortable, I dare say, as he possibly can be."

Though the latter remark was evidently intended to apply to Fanny's supposed injudicious solicitude for Colin's welfare, the girl passed it by without observation. She hurried her day's work forwards, in order to gain the necessary time for making her projected visit; and at about the middle of the afternoon suddenly disappeared from the eyes of Mrs. Clink, without informing her previously touching her place of destination.

While Dr. Rowel was yet in attendance on Colin, Fanny arrived, and introduced herself to Miss Sowersoft, as she was employing herself in picking the pips off a handful of cowslips which lay in her lap. On seeing Fanny thus unexpectedly, and under circumstances which she felt would require some very ingenious explanation or evasion, her countenance seemed to darken as though a positive shadow had been cast upon it. A struggle between her real feelings and her consciousness of the necessity to disguise them ensued; and in the course of a few brief seconds the darkness of her countenance passed away, and she affected to salute her unwelcome visiter with much cordiality.

In reply to Fanny's inquiry respecting Colin, Miss Maria stated that he was improving very nicely under Mr. Palethorpe's tuition, although they had had some trouble to make him do as he was bid; that he had enjoyed the most extraordinary good health until a few days ago, when he took a little cold, which had made him rather poorly.

"There!-I was sure of it!" cried Fanny, interrupting her; "I said so to his mother before I came away. I knew there was

something amiss, or he would have written to us before now. And how did he take such a cold, Miss Sowersoft?

"Take cold!-why, you know there are a hundred different ways of taking cold, and it is impossible sometimes for even a person himself to say how he took it. I am sure Palethorpe gets tremendous colds sometimes, and how he gets them is a perfect miracle. But, on my word, cold is so insinuating, that really, as I say sometimes, there is not a part but it will find its way to at one time or another."

"Yes

but where is Colin now? because I shall want to

see him before I go back."

"Oh, he is somewhere about the house," replied Miss Maria, with an unprecedented degree of effrontery; "but your seeing him is not of the least consequence. It cannot cure his cold; and as for anything else, it would very likely make him all the more discontented when you were gone again. If you take my advice, you would not see him, especially when I can tell you everything just the same as though you saw it yourself."

At this moment the foot of the doctor, as he groped his way down stairs, was overheard by the speaker. She started up instantly, and endeavoured to hurry Fanny out of the room before that professional gentleman should enter it; but her manœuvre failed, and before Miss Sowersoft could caution him to be silent the doctor remarked, in a sufficiently loud tone to be heard distinctly by both, that unless the boy was taken great care of, there was little chance left of his recovery.

"What boy?" exclaimed Fanny, rushing forward. "What! is he so ill as that? For God's sake let me see him!"

Concluding from the direction in which the doctor had come that Colin was somewhere in the regions above, she flew rather than walked up stairs, without waiting for an invitation or a conductor, and soon threw her arms in an ecstasy of grief upon his neck.

"Oh, Colin! God has sent me on purpose to save you! Do be better, and you shall go home again very soon."

But Colin could only put up his pallid arms in an imploring action, and cry for very joy, as he gazed in the face of one of those only two who had occupied his day and night thoughts, and been the unconscious subjects of his unceasing and most

anxious wishes.

The trouble of this first meeting being over, some more quiet conversation ensued; and, although almost too ill and weak to be allowed to talk, Colin persisted in stating briefly to the horrorstricken Fanny the kind of reception he had met with on his arrival, his treatment afterwards, the taking of his letter from him, and the brutal conduct which had caused his present illness. The girl stood silent, merely because she knew not what to think, what to believe, what to doubt; and was besides utterly lost for words to express properly her strangely mingled

thoughts. It was almost impossible-incredible! Why could they do it? There was no cause for it-there could be no cause for it. Human nature, and especially human nature in the shape of woman, was incapable of anything so infamous. Yet Colin was sensible-he had told an intelligible tale; and, most true of all, there he lay, a mere vision of what he was so brief a time ago,—a warranty plain and palpable that grievous wrong had been endured. Her brain was absolutely bewildered she looked like one hovering on the doubtful boundary between sense and insanity. She cast her eyes around for surety on the bed at him. A burst of tears, as of a spring that for the first time breaks its bounds, succeeded, and then another and another, as she fell on her knees and buried her face in the clothes that covered him.

By and by, the doctor and Miss Maria were present in the room with her. Fanny raised her head and beheld Colin's mistress attempting, in the presence of the doctor, to do the attentive, by adjusting the sheet about the boy's neck to keep off the external air.

"Do not touch him!" exclaimed Fanny, springing to her feet; "he shall have nothing from your hands, for you are a disgrace to the name of a woman!"

"Ay!" cried the doctor: "young woman, what now, what

now?

say

"What now? Sir, you may well say what now! I have heard all about it he has told me all and I that woman shall not touch him while I am here. She has nearly killed him, and now wants to show, because you are here, how kind and good she is!"

So saying, Fanny resolutely set about making the arrangement which Miss Sowersoft had contemplated with her own hands.

“Why—what — who is this young woman?" asked the doctor, somewhat astonished at the unexpected scene which had just passed before him.

66

Nobody!" replied Miss Sowersoft; "she is only Mrs. Clink's servant, and a pert impudent hussey too."

At the same time she looked in the doctor's face, and endeavoured to smile contemptuously, though it "came off" in such a manner as would inevitably have frightened anybody less accustomed than was Dr. Rowel to witness the agonies of the human countenance.

"Yes, sir,” added Fanny, "I am only a servant; but I am a woman, whether servant or mistress. I nursed this lad when I was but six years old myself, and have taken care of him ever since. She shall not drown him like a blind puppy, though she thinks she will!"

"Me drown him!" exclaimed Miss Sowersoft in feigned

amazement.

"Yes," replied Fanny, "you drown him. If you had not half murdered him in that trough, he would never have been here now."

"Do let us go down stairs, doctor," observed Miss Sowersoft; "it is not worth hearing such rubbish as this." And she made her way towards the door.

"Where is that letter?" cried Fanny eagerly, fearful lest the lady to whom she addressed herself should escape.

"Pshaw! nonsense! don't catechise me !" replied Miss Sowersoft, as she tripped down stairs; while the doctor, half in soliloquy and half addressing Miss Sowersoft, remarked, in allusion to Fanny,

"She's a damsel of some spirit too!" Then addressing the girl herself," Are you the little girl I saw at Mrs. Clink's when this boy was born?

"Yes, sir, I am," answered Fanny, as her passion sunk almost to nothing, and she blushed to be so questioned.

"Ah, indeed!" cried Doctor Rowel. "Well, I should not have thought it. Why, you are quite a fine young woman now. Dear-a-me! I had quite lost sight of you. I could not have believed it. Humph!" And the doctor surveyed her fair proportions with something of astonishment, and a great deal of satisfaction. To think that from such a little pale, half-fed, unhappy thing of work and thought beyond her years as she then was there should have sprung up the full-sized, the pretty featured, and naturally genteel-looking girl now before him! But then, he had not that benefit which the reader enjoys, of reflecting how worldly circumstances, how poverty and plenty, sway the tempers of mankind; and that, as Mistress Clink's circumstances improved, so had Fanny improved likewise; and from seven or eight years old upwards, Fanny had enjoyed a much more comfortable home than, on his first introduction to her might reasonably have been expected.

Lest the reader should unnecessarily marvel how her individuality should have been unrecognised by the physician, I beg to inform him, that while the person of every great man is as familiar to all the poor eyes of the neighbourhood as though he were their born and natural uncle, he himself remains as much in the dark as to the identity of every poor face he meets, even though he chance to meet it every day, as though he had never seen it once in the whole course of his life.

Doctor Rowel resumed his conversation.

"And, how came you to be put to service so very early? for you had not, if I remember rightly, either health or strength to recommend you."

Colin's eyes as he lay were fixed, as it might have been the eyes of a picture, on the doctor's countenance.

"I don't know, I'm sure, sir," replied Fanny but after a few moments' hesitation, added, "I suppose it was because I had no friends."