tone, adapted to the improvement of what he persisted in considering
my "infant" mind. It had reference to an anecdote Dr. Jessop had
just been telling him--about a little girl, one of our doctor's
patients, who in some passionate struggle had hurt herself very much
with a knife.

"Let this be a warning to thee, my son, not to give way to violent
passions." (My good father, thought I, there is little fear.) "For,
this child--I remember her father well, for he lived at Kingswell
here; he was violent too, and much given to evil ways before he went
abroad--Phineas, this child, this miserable child, will bear the mark
of the wound all her life."

"Poor thing!" said I, absently.

"No need to pity her; her spirit is not half broken yet. Thomas
Jessop said to me, 'That little Ursula--'"

"Is her name Ursula?" And I called to mind the little girl who had
tried to give some bread to the hungry John Halifax, and whose cry of
pain we heard as the door shut upon her. Poor little lady! how sorry
I was. I knew John would be so infinitely sorry too--and all to no
purpose--that I determined not to tell him anything about it. The
next time I saw Dr. Jessop I asked him after the child, and learned
she had been taken away somewhere, I forgot where; and then the whole
affair slipped from my memory.

"Father," said I, when he ceased talking--and Jael, who always ate
her dinner at the same time and table as ourselves, but "below the
salt," had ceased nodding a respectful running comment on all he