top of their voices, without even a
parting salutation to the family they had been visiting.

CHAPTER VIII.

"It is a hermit.
Well, methinks I've read
In romance tales of such strange beings oft;
But surely ne'er did think these eyes should see
The living, breathing, walking counterpart.
Canst tell me where he dwells?
Far in the woods,
In a lone hut, apart from all his kind."

OLD PLAY.

The pale moonbeams peeped through the rents and crevices of Dilly
Danforth's wretched abode, as the poor woman sat on the hearth with
Willie's head lying in her lap, while he read by the flickering
fire-light from the pages of a well-worn Bible. The little fellow had
never fully recovered from that long, painful illness that had nearly
cost him his life, and from which it is very possible he would never
have arisen but for those little bundles of firewood that were so
providentially laid on poor Dilly's threshold, by some charitable, though
unknown, hand. They still continued to be placed there, and it was well
they were so, for Mrs. Danforth's health had failed so much she was not
able to perform half her former amount of labor; and had it not been for
these small armfuls of fuel, which very much resembled those Willie used
to collect, the washerwoman and her boy must have perished during the
long, cold winter season. Yes, perished in the very midst of Wimbledon;
within a stone's throw of many a well-filled woodyard, and under the nose
of a Mrs. Pimble's philanthropic efforts for the amelioration of her
species. Dilly's neglect on the part of the many arose, not so much from
inhumanity and covetousness, as from a wrong bias, which a few words had
created in the people's minds. A report had passed through the village,
several months before, purporting to come from a reliable source, which
represented Mrs. Danforth as not so poor as she appeared; that she
assumed her poverty-stricken garb and appearance to excite sympathy, and
thus swindle, in a small way, from the purses of her wealthy neighbors.
There is nothing of which people have a greater horror than of being
humbugged, if they know it; so, for the most part, the Wimbledonians
turned a deaf ear and cold shoulder on the washerwoman's sorrowful
supplications for charity.