ome wood," was the moody reply.

"And so you are giving wood to that lazy, foolish, stupid creature, are
you?"

"No, I am not. She says her boy is sick and she has no fire."

"A pretty tale, and I hope 'tis true. She'll learn by and by her sin and
folly. If she had asserted her own rights, as she should have done, and
left her drunken husband and moping boy years ago, she might have been
well off in the world by this time. But she chose like an idiot to live
with him and endure his abuses till he died, and since she has tied
herself to that foolish boy. O, I have no patience with such stupid
women! They are a disgrace to the true female race. Go and tell her to go
home and never enter my doors a-begging again."

Dilly did not wait to receive this unfeeling message, but pulled her thin
blanket around her, and stole out in the chill night air, and ran toward
home as swiftly as possible. She stumbled over something on the
threshold. It was a bundle of firewood. How came it there? She could not
tell, but seized it in her arms, ran hastily in, and approached Willie's
bed-side. He was still sleeping tranquilly, and that night a comfortable
fire, lighted by unknown generosity, blazed on the lowly hearth.

CHAPTER V.

"There is a jarring discord in my ear,
It setteth all my soul ashake with fear,
Good sir, canst drive it off?"----

OLD PLAY.

All Wimbledon was aroused one cold November morning by a direful
conglomeration of sounds;--strange, discordant shrieks, ominous groans,
a clanking, as of iron chains and fetters, a slow, heavy, elephantine
tread gradually growing on the ear, and a deep, continuous rumbling as of
earthquakes in the bowels of the earth. Mrs. Salsify Mumbles, nervous and
delicate as she was, clung fast to the neck of her liege lord when he
attempted to throw open the sash of his window, to discover the import of
this unusual disturbance of the nocturnal stillness of Wimbledon. Good
Deacon Allen, who was lying on his deaf ear, became restless, and visions
of the final retribution and doom of the wicked harassed his slumbers.
Suddenly he awoke, and dismal groans and unearthly rumblings struck his
terrified ear. "Sally! Sally!" said he, leaping from bed and giving his
sleeping spouse a vigorous shake, "why sleepest thou? arise and don thy
drab camlet and high-crowned cap, a