mouth and glassy eye in her chair, sidling herself to and fro, with the low, peevish sound of fretful age and bodily pain, sometimes this querulous murmur sharpened into a shrill but unmeaning scold. "There now, you gallows bird, you has taken the swipes without chalking; you wants to cheat the poor widow; but I sees you, I does! Providence protects the aged and the innocent—oh, oh! these twinges will be the death o' me! Where's Martha? You jade, you! you wiperous hussey, bring the tape here, doesn't you see how I suffers? Has you no bowels, to let a poor Chistin cretur perish for want o' help! That's the way with 'em, that's the way! No one cares for I now—no one has respect for the grey 'airs of the old!" And then the voice dwindled into the whimpering "tenor of its way." Martha, a strapping wench with red hair streaming over her "hills of snow," was not, however, inattentive to the wants of her mistress. "Who knows," said she to a man who sat by the hearth, drinking tea out of a blue mug, and toasting with great care two or three huge rounds of bread, for his own private and especial nutriment—"who knows," said she, "what we may come to ourselves?" and, so say-
