Page:The English Peasant.djvu/351

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WILLIAM HUNTINGTON.
337

the powder mills at Ewell. His wages were to be eleven shillings in summer, and ten shillings in winter. As he had been obliged to pawn his best clothes to get money to move his goods, he had to live very closely at first in order to save enough to redeem them. Indeed, his capital in hand was simply nothing, for on arriving at his new abode on Monday, he found that he had just tenpence halfpenny left to provide for himself, wife, and child until Saturday evening.

But having tested the power of prayer, and being, as he says, rich in faith, he knelt down, and besought his God to send him relief.

"The next evening," he relates, "my landlord's daughter and son-in-law came up to see their mother, with whom I lodged, and brought some baked meat, which they had just taken out of their oven, and brought for me and my wife to sup along with them. These poor people knew nothing of us nor of our God. The next day in the evening they did the same; and kept sending victuals or garden stuff to us all the week long. We had not made our case known to any but God; nor did we appear ragged, or like people in want; no, we appeared better in dress than even those who relieved ]is; but God sent an answer to our prayer by them, who knew not at the same time what they were about, nor did I tell them till some months after." Then it was that this good neighbour told him that he had been impressed with the idea that they had no victuals, although his wife scouted the notion saying, "These people are better to pass than we are."

In order to save the money for the clothes, which, with interest, came to nearly forty shillings, they had, as I have said, to pinch and live very close. So they took to eating barley bread, suggested by reading the passage, "There is a lad here with two barley loaves and a few small fishes." "If," said Huntington to his wife, "the poor Saviour and His Apostles ate barley bread, surely we may."

Notwithstanding the saving thus effected, the effort at getting the clothes out of pawn was so great that they sometimes lived upon nothing else but their barley cakes. His fatherly heart yearned over his little child, and he was much distressed to think she should have to suffer on his account. However, he relates in