locked up in the cellar for a day or two at a time. I was at my
worldliest then. Left alone, I yielded myself up to a worldly
yearning for enough of anything (except misery), and for the death
of mother's father, who was a machine-maker at Birmingham, and on
whose decease, I had heard mother say, she would come into a whole
courtful of houses 'if she had her rights.' Worldly little devil,
I would stand about, musingly fitting my cold bare feet into
cracked bricks and crevices of the damp cellar-floor, - walking
over my grandfather's body, so to speak, into the courtful of
houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes to wear.

At last a change came down into our cellar. The universal change
came down even as low as that, - so will it mount to any height on
which a human creature can perch, - and brought other changes with
it.

We had a heap of I don't know what foul litter in the darkest
corner, which we called 'the bed.' For three days mother lay upon
it without getting up, and then began at times to laugh. If I had
ever heard her laugh before, it had been so seldom that the strange
sound frightened me. It frightened father too; and we took it by
turns to give her water. Then she began to move her head from side
to side, and sing. After that, she getting no better, father fell
a-laughing and a-singing; and then there was only I to give them
both water, and they both died.



FOURTH CHAPTER