res for his
sheep, than the wolf he must appear to the poor people of the parish.
He takes to the last penny all he can get out of them, and gives them
only hard words and stones in return." Miss Martha, however, bless her
kind heart, gave the poor people not only gentle words, but many "a cup
of cold water," in the name of Christ, and to the utmost of her means
assisted her poorer neighbours, as, indeed, did also her sisters. Many
a day their meals were dry crusts and tea, when they were giving
nourishing food, good beef and mutton, to some of the poor around them,
requiring strengthening. I mention these things because it will show
that the Little Lady had fallen into good hands. My father and mother
did all they could to help them, and certainly their labours were
lightened after our arrival. The very first morning my father was up by
daylight, with spade in hand, digging in the garden, while my mother
helped Miss Anna Maria in the kitchen. Indeed, my father was not a man
to eat the bread of idleness either ashore or afloat.

The happiest day we had yet spent was that on which Mr Schank arrived.
It was delightful to see the way in which his old mother welcomed him;
how she rose from her seat and stretched out her arms, and placed her
hands on his shoulders, and gazed into his weather-beaten face; and how
his sisters hung about him, and how Miss Anna Maria, who, I ought to
say, was generally called the baby, came and put her short fat arms
round his neck and kissed him again and again, just as she used to do
when she was a little girl. Indeed, just then she evidently had
forgotten her own age and his, and probably thought of him just as she
did when he came home a young midshipman the first time from sea, proud
of his dirk and uniform, and full of the scenes he had witnessed and the
wonders of the foreign lands he had visited. He patted me on the head
very kindly, and told me he hoped I would some day be as good a seaman
as my father. Then he told his sisters that he had been making interest
to obtain a warrant for Burton as a boatswain, and that he had little
doubt he would get it, for a better seaman never stepped, while it was
hard to find a more trustworthy or braver man. "Not that I have any
interest myself," he observed, "but I have put young Harry Oliver up to
it, and he has plenty of interest, and so he made the application in my
name through his friends."

"If it is a good thing, brother Jack, to b