Hastily giving the children some victuals she had brought for them, she
entered the hovel, furniture there was none;--a chest of tools and a
heap of straw was all its contents. The grate had evidently been
unconscious of a fire for weeks past,--but it was summer. She shuddered
as she looked around. This was the home for which the proud lord of
those domains exacted a rent of £10 per year. She was not one, however,
to give way to idle speculation when there was good to be done: she
opened the shutters, swept the floor, and threw a quilt she had brought
with her over the heap of straw, then made the children wash themselves,
and proceeded to dress them in some hastily made clothes, which her
basket contained. Then taking the little one in her lap, and making the
others lay down on the bed--for hunger had awoke them far before they
had their needful rest, she sat down upon the tool-chest lulling the
child to sleep, and patiently awaiting the arrival of the father. A step
approached, it was not the man, however, but the landlady's wayward
nephew:--he, too, carried a basket, and seemed pleased, but not at all
surprised at seeing Mary.

'I knew I should find you here,' said he, sitting beside her, (he was
much more companionable with her than with any other person,) 'I knew as
soon as you came back and heard how badly off these poor creatures were,
you would come to relieve them. It's like you, Mary, you seem the only
Angel amongst a race of fiends.'

'It is our duty to help the poor and needy, Edward: I only grieve I was
absent from the village. Things ought never to have come to this pass.
Why did not the neighbors help them?'

'Why, Mary, in the first place you know poor Johnson was no favorite of
theirs--he was better educated than any of them, you know he was not