Meantime, Job, not daring to pause and reflect on the possible consequence to his limbs of this sudden activity, had left the green, and turned into the plantation at the back of the manufacturer's house. It certainly was a long plantation, but Job thought it endless, as his breath grew shorter and shorter, and his pantings more and more noisy. Very glad he was when he escaped from the heavy chill air of the plantation, and began to shuffle along the drier path of the orchard, strewn with blossoms from the apple trees that met overhead. Still he trotted on, until he knew by the cackling of the hens that he had passed the poultry yard, and that the next break in the palings would bring him to the servants' quarters. Dim visions of rest, with coffee and hot rolis, began to interfere with, and a little confuse, the vivid philanthropy that had brought him so far: but on he went, till-yes, there was a kitchen door standing invitingly open, and a rousing fire blazing away inside. Job wouldn't spoil all by stopping now, now that, he was so near. Once more he urged on his reluctant feet, which were growing heavier and clumsier every minute, and by getting continually in each other's way, had more than once nearly thrown him down, but then, 'twas clear, they hadn't been used to this kind of treatment. The goal was reached at last. He saw a chair just within the kitchen, it was no time for ceremony -exhausted nature could no more-what harm if the servants did see how fast he had come? Job flung himself over the threshold, and towards the chair, but overlooked a slight rise of the framework, and so went headlong across the floor, and thus presented himself to the genteellooking man-servant, and the two housemaids who were

there at breakfast, and who burst into a general roar of laughter, as they saw who it was.

"Bless me, why it's lazy Job!" cried one of the housemaids, when the first paroxysm of mirth was over; "whatever can make him in such a hurry?"

Why, havin' a heart wi' feelins in't, which is moor than some folk hae," grumbled Job, as he rose, and tenderly began rubbing the knee, while gazing in dismay on the other, which appeared blushingly through a terrible rent in his trousers. "Go up, one of you, an tell your missus as how Abel Drake's wife's babby's a dyin': will you?"

"Abel Drake's wife! What, that poor young thing as became a wife while she were hersel but a child?" exclaimed the other housemaid.

"Now, are ye a goin', or mun aw tak' the message mysel ?"

"I'll go, I'll go, Job, though I dunna think Mrs. Wolcombe can be spared just yet," said the woman who had first spoken, as she jumped up, and hastily left the kitchen.

"Abel Drake's wife ?" inquired the man-servant, in an off-hand, easy manner, as though the whole affair were one that in a business point of view concerned only the women, and, therefore, that he might placidly go on with his breakfast. "Abel Drake's wife? H'm! h'm! h'm! Warn't that the young fellow that headed the strike, that cost master such lots of money ?"

"Yes," grunted Job.

"H'm! So I thought. And what's become of him now ?"

"Poor Barbara!" here chimed in the housemaid, "I guess she's had but a hard time on it, sin then. Here, Job, tak' a cup of coffee, and some bread and butter." Job took what was offered, and ate and drank faster than one might have expected, judging from his general habits, and from the abstracted air with which he handed his breakfast cup to and fro, and received fresh plates full of bread and butter, evidently he was deeply engrossed with something. At last, as he put down the coffee cup, once more empty, he sighed, and said-

"Well, sho had'n her choice atween a bad match and a good un,”—but there Job stopped, looking at the man-servant, and the man-servant looking at him, with an odd twinkle in his eye, that Job didn't understand, and that he did not like.

"Yes, Job, go on; I know of the bad match, but what about the good one?"

The man-servant had to guess for himself as to the nature of the reply Job might have made, for the housemaid now returned, saying—

"Job, Mrs. Wolcombe is already gone. She put on her bonnet directly I gave her your message, and went out. You won't overtake her, so may as well rest a bit." "Na na, thankye," answered Job, with an important air, and rising for once to a full sense of the dignity of occupation." Happen th' widow 'll want me." And so he hurried off, after again exchanging glances with the man-servant, who smiled an insufferably knowing smile, with eyes fixed on Job's face, while Job, sullen and savage, lifted and let fall his gaze, as though half inclined to ask

what was meant; but, on the whole, coming to the con clusion that to do so would be absurdly troublesome.

As he recrossed the green he heard the factory bell calling the hands from breakfast, and he stopped a moment to look at the people flocking in through the great mill gates, across the ravine, where he used to go, and to ask himself whether he had done wisely to give up regular labour, and trust to precarious occupation. But, when Job asked himself a question, he seldom took the further trouble of exacting an answer; so now he hurried on towards the court, which he reached just in time to see the manufacturer's lady gliding through it in her quick unaffected way, not holding her delicately tinted silk dress, of silver grey, a hair's breadth nearer to her, or behaving in any way differently among those poor people, and dirty houses, than he had seen her when walking to her carriage, or with guests on her lawn.

The door was opened by the widow in answer to Mrs. Wolcombe's knock. They spoke together a few words in whispers, as the visitor took off her bonnet and gloves, before going behind the screen. As she advanced into the close room, the smell of medicine made her feel faint after her rapid walk. But she waited while the widow went on stirring something in a saucepan over the fire, and gradually accustomed herself to the atmosphere. Then she began to look round. The screen before the door was merely a clothes-horse covered by an old patchwork quilt. In a corner stood an infirm tent-bedstead, which appeared to have given in its time so much rest to others that it began to feel the want of it for itself. These two articles, with a rocking-chair, an old settle, a deal table, and a few

of the very commonest and most indispensable household utensils, completed the miserable furniture. There was not a single seat, except the rocking-chair, even to offer to the visitor; who understood at a glance the sort of life that must have been going on here, for many a week-what desperate struggles with poverty and want this chamber must have witnessed-and that even now it was not physical distress alone that had made them succumb so far as to request her aid. A figure, unconscious as yet of her presence, knelt at the bed-side; and Mrs. Wolcombe stood for some little time looking silently down upon it, for the words of comfort she had intended to speak seemed all too weak and useless for the occasion.

When it is said that Barbara Drake, the mill girl, with a dirty coloured skirt over her night dress, untidy hair, and pinched haggard face, was still beautiful, the word must be understood to mean, not a beauty made up of roundness, and joyous eyes, and varying tints of white and red, fading and deepening under every emotion, as this China rose at the window loses and gains colour with every frown and smile of the sun; no, Barbara had no beauty of that kind; here was the cold colourless beauty of a statue, which you could not but see and be startled by when it presented itself under such an unlovely garb, and so injured in what might be called its own secret law-perfection of form-by the ravages of hunger, and of some still more terrible affliction of the soul. As she knelt there, holding a little passive hand, and gazing straight before her, with eyes that seemed almost unnaturally large and brilliant, and which made her face look even more pallid than it was, as you noted the features, so bold in outline,