was hard, very hard, that an honest, industrious man, as he was, should
so scantily pick a living out of this rich earth: after all said, let
the parson preach as he will, it's a fine thing to have money, and that
his reverence knows right well, or he wouldn't look so closely for his
dues. [N.B. Poor Mr. Evans was struggling as well as he could to bring
up six children, on a hundred and twenty pounds per annum.] Roger, too,
was getting on in years, with a blacker prospect for the future than
when he first stood behind a plough-tail. Then there were many wants
unsatisfied, which a bit of gold might buy; and his wife teased him to
be doing something better. Thus was it come at length to pass, that,
although he had endured so many years, he now got discontented at his
penury;--what human heart can blame him?--and with murmurings came
doubt; with doubt of Providence, desire of lucre; so the sunshine of
religion faded from his path;--what mortal mind can wonder?




CHAPTER II.

THE FAMILY; THE HOME; AND MORE REPININGS.


NOW, if Malthus and Martineau be verily the pundits that men
think them, Roger had twice in his life done a very foolish thing: he
had sinned against society, statistics, and common sense, by a two-fold
marriage. The wife of his youth (I am afraid he married early) had once
been kitchen-maid at the Hall; but the sudden change from living
luxuriously in a great house, to the griping poverty of a cotter's
hovel, had changed, in three short years, the buxom country girl into an