from her back into her arms, she sate down, laying the little one across
her knee, whilst the eldest of the two children dropped on the bare
earth with which the shed was floored, and began nibbling a huge crust
which the mother put into his hand.

In the meantime, work went on as before the woman had come in, nor was a
word spoken, till Shanty, looking up from the horse-shoe which he was
hammering, remarked in his own mind, that he wondered that the little
one stretched on the woman's knee, was not awakened and frightened by
the noise of the forge; but there the creature lies, he thought, as if
it had neither sense or hearing. When this strange thought suggested
itself, the old man dropped his hammer, and fixing his eye on the
infant, he seemed to ask himself these questions,--What, if the child
should be dead? would a living child, drop as that did from the back of
the woman on her lap, like a lump of clay, nor move, nor utter a moan,
when thrown across its mother's lap? Urged then by anxiety, he left his
anvil, approached the woman, and stood awhile gazing at the child,
though unable for some minutes to satisfy himself, or to put away the
horrible fear that he might perchance be looking at a body without life.
Mr. Dymock was acting the part of bellows-blower, in order to assist
some work which the young stranger was carrying on in the fire. The lad
who generally performed this service for Shanty, had got permission for
a few hours, to visit his mother over the Border, Mr. Dymock having told
him in all kindness that he would blow for him if needs must. But the
fitful light--the alternate glow and comparative darkness which
accompanied and kept time with the motion of the bellows, made it almost
impossible for the old man to satisfy himself concerning his horrible
imagination. He saw that the infant who lay so still on the woman's lap,
was as much as two years of age; that, like the woman, it had dark hair,
and that its complexion was olive; and thus he was put out in his first