"Nor of you," said Mr. Croak, interrupting her. "Amend, I say! Remember, this is your seventh appearance within these walls."

"It may be; I wont be so unpolite, Mr. Croak, as to dispute your calculations. It may be! but I never trouble you long. Mrs. Heyrick will release me. She has never failed me yet in any of my diffi

culties, nor will she now."

"Matron, away with her!" cried the Governor; thus abruptly terminating the interview. "Mrs. Heyrick," he added aside, "is a wealthy and benevolent woman, but abominably deceived in that hypocritical gin-consumer yonder."

But who was the party thus described, benevolent, and yet deceived? The past must supply the answer.

Through the little village of Meadwaters in Somerset, on a stormy day in the spring of 1800, passed in quick succession strong detachments of the 40th, 42nd, and 57th regiments, en route for Bristol, to embark for foreign service. The villagers eyed the strangers, some with curiosity, some with compassion, some with an eager and almost irrepressible desire to join their ranks, but none with the beating heart and eager gaze of the aged vicar, Mr. Rudkin. All his sons had been soldiers; all had distinguished themselves; and all had fallen. The old man scanned rank after rank as it passed him till tears dimmed his vision. The noble bearing, the manly step, the sparkling eye, the gallant achievements of those who were gone, memory brought rapidly before him and then the idea, ever present to the memory, and often embodied in words, again recurred:

And

"Ah! if I could but feel sure about them as to the future! why not? They were true to their country, true to their King, true to their colours; why may I not hope they were pardoned and accepted, as being true to their GOD? But still A long and passionate burst of tears closed the ejaculation.

"

The day wore on, as life does, chequered with alternate storm and sunshine; at sunset all was quiet at the Parsonage, and its primitive occupants were seated at their evening meal, when the landlady of "The Buzzard" made her appearance, and in hurried accents informed the vicar that a soldier's wife was dying at her house; that a child which was with her, lay, "seemingly in a fit;" that no doctor could be found; and that the Pastor's presence and aid were "humbly sought and truly needed."

"I'll accompany you, my dear," said Mrs. Rudkin, her woman's heart roused, with all its sympathies, the moment mention was made of the suffering child: "I may be of use either to mother or infant. Lead the way, Mrs. Mammatt; neither the vicar nor myself can walk quite as briskly as we did some five and thirty years ago." "True, madam; but you feel as warmly."

"Tut, tut, landlady! Who would not feel for a dying woman with a senseless babe beside her? One meets at times with imposition, but - Vicar! Vicar! on with your great-coat!

wrapper !"

Here came very visible signs of resistance.

Now your

"Nay-you quit not your chimney corner this bitter night without it; so- SO another knot good! Now, landlady, we are at your

service!"

On a truckle-bed, in a miserable room at "The Buzzard," lay a young and decidedly handsome woman; pale from loss of blood, dis

orderly in her attire, and conscious only at intervals of what was passing around her. She was a corporal's wife. Such was her statement, and a true one; — and had fallen from the top of the baggagewaggon, which was conveying to their destination herself and some other women, whose husbands were privates in the 42nd regiment. The injuries she had sustained by her fall had rendered her incapable of proceeding farther. Her right arm was one mass of bruises, and on one side of her head there was an ugly wound, which for an hour had bled profusely. Altogether she was a ghastly spectacle; and general as well as active was the compassion she excited. Her child next claimed attention. It was a poor, wizened, livid, unhealthy-looking starveling, of an age difficult to guess, but apparently under two years. The gossips around pronounced it to be in a fit; and though its eyes were wide open, it looked unnaturally heavy, lethargic, and stupified. Mrs. Rudkin took it upon her knee, chafed its little hands rapidly, but kindly, and for a moment scrutinized it keenly. Ere long she had drawn her conclusions.

"You call this a fit, do you?"

"A very heavy one," returned the landlady.

"But I'm wrong;

it's not one, but many; for the babe has been in fits, coming and going, for the last two hours."

"It's no fit," remarked the lady with deliberation, and after a pause; "the child is drunk! desperately drunk! dead drunk!"

The astonishment of the listeners at this solution of the difficulty almost vanquished the habitual reverence in which they held Mrs. Rudkin's opinions.

The vicar was the first to recover himself. "Martha!" exclaimed he, somewhat chidingly, "you are too rapid in your conclusions: reconsider your assertion: an infant of these tender years to be drunk-"

"As any tippling Irishman at wake or fair," added the lady, finishing the sentence: " and I appeal to you, dector," turning to the surgeon, who now tumbled up into the bedroom, spurred, booted, considerably touched in the wind, and splashed up to the ears; "whether my conclusion is incorrect?"

The medical authority, thus appealed to, took a lengthened survey of each patient; drew what information he could gather from the bystanders; probed with care the wound in the mother's head; and noted deliberately the fluttering pulse and laboured breathing of her babe. Addressing Mrs. Rudkin, he at length exclaimed abruptly,

"You are right, madam, in your conjecture; the child is drunk! Its stomach is loaded with neat spirit at this moment. The mother has also been drinking; and fell from the baggage-waggon, doubtless, under the influence of liquor. The wound in her head has been anything but pernicious, since the blood she has thus lost has warded off serious consequences. In fact, it is a case of intemperance altogether, and a more disgusting one I never witnessed."

The old vicar shook his head sadly, and sighed.

"Doctor!" cried his energetic partner; "we will divide the spoil! You shall undertake the older transgressor-the worst case of the two in every sense of the word-I will manage the younger. It's a sad verdict to pass on any woman to say that she is unfit to be trusted with her own infant, but such is the case here. The child shall go with me to the parsonage."

"No better arrangement can be devised," was the doctor's comment; and with this understanding the party separated.

The little patient did credit to the decided treatment of her doctress. The heavy, lethargic expression of the countenance disappeared; brightness returned to the eye, and laughter to the lip; but, strange to say, the little girl never seemed to miss her mother; never mourned her absence; never made the slightest inquiry respecting her. The recovery of that worthy was tedious. The "ugly wound" in her head required" coaxing;" while her system, inflamed by determined and habitual intoxication, required "lowering." To the necessity of this latter course Mrs. Corporal Dangerfield-so the sick woman styled herself was a truly reluctant convert. Her conduct in other points was extraordinary. She asked once, and that coldly, after her child, but never expressed the slightest wish to see her. Her main care seemed to be the preservation of her "marriage lines," which she kept under her pillow, and which proved her to be the lawful wife of one "Corporal John Dangerfield, of his Majesty's forty-second foot ;" and her chief anxiety to trace the course of the regiment, and ultimately to regain it at home or abroad. Second to these sources of disquietude, was a ceaseless search after a certain key which, she averred, she had dropped while at "The Buzzard, which belonged to a small private canteen, and, wanting which, she was a lost woman!"

Altogether she was "a truly unaccountable female;" a description which her host repeated with considerable bitterness when, on the ninth evening after her arrival, Mrs. Corporal Dangerfield walked out, and walked off, without ever going through the previous preliminary of calling for her bill.

The worthy couple at the parsonage were somewhat startled at the announcement of the military lady's departure; but the vicar's equanimity soon returned, and his benevolent spirit vented itself in the following dialogue.

"Gone, is she?" said he; "well, I'm truly glad that the village is rid of her! She was a wicked woman."

"Oh! ah! that's all very well!" cried his lady; "but what is now to be done, Mr. Rudkin? Where are we to find a home for this un

fortunate little girl?"

"Now Vicar-now Mr. Rudkin-consider well what you're about. Shelter little Ruth now, and you must shelter her for life; you never can turn her off hereafter."

"I have no such intention," said the vicar quietly.

"Nor shall she be brought up as an adopted child. She is a corporal's daughter, and may hereafter have to earn her own bread: may be claimed by father, or by mother, or by both. To train her up as a fine lady-"

"Would be cruel, indeed," interrupted the vicar. "Nothing further from my mind, Martha! Bring her up as humbly as you please; but save her from the contamination of a drunken mother's example."

Life ebbs away with rapid and even current to those who float calmly on its surface, with eyes fixed on the bright eternity beyond it; whose bosoms throb with no feverish desires; whose hearts treasure up no malevolent impulses; who have forgotten all wrongs, and forgiven

all enemies; whom conscience affrights with no spectres of the guilty past; but whose daily occupations are more or less hallowed by benevolent aims, and whose language breathes kindliness and good-will to all.

Such was the aspect of existence to the aged inmates of the parsonage; and both were startled, one Christmas Eve, by arriving suddenly at the conclusion, that that would be the sixth winter during which Ruth had shared its shelter.

The features of the little girl were, as ever, unprepossessing. Her general appearance, in fact, told much and distinctly against her. Whether from the quantity of ardent spirits with which her system had been drugged in early childhood, or from ill usage, or from insufficient food, her figure was stunted and shrunken, and her face anxious and prematurely aged. But for these, a rich requital had the Great Spirit bestowed in mind and disposition. The former was truthful, pure, and noble in the extreme: the latter, no disappointment had power to ruffle.

The chilling blasts of December blew roughly on the Christmas Eve already adverted to, and assailed with many a fitful gust the walls of the old vicarage, within which a happy group was seated around a glowing hearth. Moan and howl as the wind would, its violence damped not the mirth of the merry party within. The "Yule Clog" had been burnt; and the well-spiced bowl of rich milk had been quaffed; and the Christmas carol had been sung; and the warm winter clothing for the poor had been duly ticketed and arranged previous to distribution on Holy Innocent's Eve; when a tall, gaunt female figure rushed up the garden-walk, knocked loudly at the little portal, and, before it was possible the summons could be answered, ran hastily from the door to the parlour window, and planting herself before it, shrieked in those tones, hoarse and thick, which a predilection for gin invariably brings on.

"I am come for my child; give me my child; I want my child; if I tear the house down, I'll have my child."

Mrs. Rudkin turned pale; full well she recognised the voice; "It's that dreadful woman, the corporal's wife," whispered she to her husband. "See her-speak to her-bribe her-do anything but yield Ruth."

The old clergyman obeyed his lady's bidding, but, on this occasion, even her tact was at fault.

"I'll not come in!" shouted the wilful and maddened-by-drink, insolent woman; "I want none of your cursed sermons, not I! Don't prattle and preach to me! I'm a widow, and I want my child. I'm forlorn and I'm destitute, and I want my child. We will beg through the world together, old hypocrite!" and she menaced Mr. Rudkin with her fist; "will ye, daur ye say the word that ye'll not let me see my

own bairn ?"

"Who is this?" cried Ruth, creeping with childish curiosity to the door, and marvelling at the unusual tumult.

"Your mother!" roared the soldier's widow, seizing her; "your own flesh and blood; your starving, desolate, desperate mother; come with me and beg for me."

"No-no-no!" cried Ruth, completely terrified, and striving to disengage herself from the fury's grasp.

"What! you disown me?-your own mother who bore ye-who

VOL. XVII.

E

brought ye into this weary world! Serpent, as ye are, I'll teach ye better!" and before her arm could be arrested it fell with brutal violence on the head of the unresisting victim.

"Seize that woman!" cried the old vicar, now thoroughly roused: "seize her, Thomas, and we will place her in custody!"

"Is it ME that you'll seize?" cried she turning with a kindling eye towards the aged ecclesiastic: "first rob me of my child, and then take away my liberty, eh? Stand clear!-stand clear! I say, which shall I send first to h-amongst ye?"

The

She stooped as she spoke, and lifting a large fragment of a heavy coping-stone, flung it by a vast effort into the centre of the hall. There it encountered a little, ancient, fragile, worm-eaten cabinet, which it effectually demolished. Further injury there was nonewithin; but without! all, strange to say, was silence there. effort had been too great. Excitement, and vindictive feeling, and intemperance had o'ermastered nature; a vessel had given way; blood gushed freely from the mouth and nostrils, and in a few seconds the drunken woman had passed into the presence of her God.

Many years rolled away without shaking the impression which the events of that fearful Christmas-eve left on the mind of Ruth Dangerfield. Her mother's career and habits, the circumstances under which she first entered Meadwaters, and quitted it; her language, appearance, and violence on the evening of her death; the frame of mind in which the final change found her these were points which recurred at times with agony to the orphan's memory. One lasting and governing effect they wrought-such a horror of intemperance, and such habits of self-restraint, that her after-existence seemed one perpetual exemplification of the ravages of the one, and the advantages of the other.

She lived to womanhood with her venerable protectors-lived to repay them by her changeless fidelity for much of their bypast kindness; lived to feel that much of their earthly comfort was insured by her prudence and forethought. Mrs. Rudkin, the quick, the shrewd, the clever, the penetrating, became, towards the close of life, perfectly imbecile; and during the last waning months of her existence the only being she apparently cared for, or was able to recognize, was her plain-featured but devoted attendant.

"Ruth!" said she, the week before she died, looking up suddenly, and speaking, after a long silence; "your mother was a very queer woman. I've an idea that I once saw her fight. Who was it with? Mr. Binks? yes, Mr. Binks it was; the fat churchwarden; and she knocked him over; and he cried out 'Murder' !”

"No, ma'am, no; you're quite mistaken," replied Ruth earnestly, cut to the quick at the turn the conversation had taken.

"I'm never mistaken!" persisted the old lady angrily. "I recollect everything and everybody. She was a very queer woman; and she wore a cap trimmed, very oddly, with red and yellow ribands. Only think-how very strange to have red and yellow ribbands on the same cap! Where was it that she said she would send us all to if we didn't please her? It was to a very strange place, I know."

Ruth's distress could no longer be concealed; she sobbed audibly. "That's a good girl!" continued the old lady. "It's very proper you should weep for her. Everybody should weep for their own mother. When did she die? She was a worthy woman, I dare