with it extinguished the flames with which he said that he had found her
almost surrounded. Happily, from the great number of under-garments she
wore, only the outer rags had caught. He had been sitting on a rock
above the hovel, and hearing a scream, and seeing a light break forth
through a hole in the roof, he ran down, on the chance of something
being wrong, and was undoubtedly the means of saving the poor creature
from instant destruction. He and Jenny together lifted Moggy on to her
straw bed, and in so doing a piece of burnt stick still smouldering fell
out from among her clothes. This was evidently what had set her on
fire, but how it had come there, was the question. Jenny was loud in
her praise of the young gentleman. He was so gentle, and kind, and
didn't mind touching the dirty old creature, and helping to place her in
an easy position. He took out his purse, and observing that he hadn't
much money, he gave her a handful of shillings, as he said, to help to
pay the doctor and to buy her some proper food and clothing.
Fortunately he saw a boy crossing the mountain, and running after him he
gave him a shilling to go and call a doctor. The lad naturally came to
me. The young gentleman would not tell Jenny his name, saying, `names
don't signify.' He had to get back to his inn on the other side of the
mountain, and as it was growing dark he could wait no longer; but, as
Jenny said, ran off as fast as a deer up the steep, singing and jumping
as merry as a lark. He told Jenny that, if he could, he would come back
to learn how the poor old creature might be getting on, but that he
feared he should be living too far off to reach her on foot. This
account was, I own, like a gleam of sunshine, though it threw into a yet
darker shade the sad account of an act of which I am compelled to tell
you. Having dressed Old Moggy's hurts, I observed several stones, some
lying on the bed, and others scattered about the floor of the hut. A
large one I especially remarked on the hearth, and which I had no doubt
had struck the embers of the fire, and been the immediate cause of its
bursting into a flame, and igniting the poor creature's clothes. I
asked Jenny if she could account for the stones being, as they were,
scattered about in every direction; and she then gave me a history of a
piece of barbarous cruelty, the result of a thoughtlessness and an
amount of ignorance I should scarcely have expected in the actors.
Jenn