she or Tamar find that they had more to do than was agreeable; if they
had no servants to wait upon them, they had no servants to disarrange
their house. They had engaged an old cottager on the moor to give them
an hour's work every evening, and for this they paid him with a stoup of
milk, or some other small product of their dairy; money they had not to
spare, and this he knew,--nor did he require any; he would have given
his aid to the fallen family for nothing, had it been asked of him.

In wild and thinly peopled countries, there is more of neighbourly
affection,--more of private kindness and sympathy than in crowded
cities. Man is a finite creature; he cannot take into his heart many
objects at once, and such, indeed, is the narrowness of his
comprehension, that he cannot even conceive how the love of an infinite
being can be generally exercised through creation. It is from this
incapacity that religious people, at least too many of them, labour so
sedulously as they do to instil the notion of the particularity of the
work of salvation, making it almost to appear, that the Almighty Father
brings beings into existence, merely to make them miserable,--but we are
wandering from our story.

Aunt Margaret and Tamar had been at the cottage a fortnight before
Dymock returned; Tamar saw him first coming down the glen, looking
wearied, dispirited and shabby.

She ran out to meet her adopted father, and sprang into his arms; his
eyes were filled with tears, and her bright smiles caused those eyes
to overflow.

She took his hand, she brought him in, she set him a chair, and Mrs.
Margaret kissing him, said "Come Dymock brighten up, and thank your God