se, the gentleman said, "Whose sheep are
those on the ghyll yonder?"

"Auld Mr. Ritson's, them herdwicks."

The sheep were on a ridge of shelving rock.

"Dangerous spot, eh?"

"Ey, it's a bent place. They're verra clammersome, the black-faced
sorts."

"I'll bid you good-day, Matthew." The yellow-haired elderly gentleman
was moving off. He walked with a jerk and a spring on his toes. "And
mind you take your daughter to the new doctor at Keswick," he said at
parting.

"It's not doctoring that'll mend Mercy," the charcoal-burner muttered,
when the other had gone.

CHAPTER III.

Josiah Bonnithorne was quite without kinspeople or connections. His
mother had been one of two sisters who lived by keeping a small
confectioner's shop in Whitehaven, and were devoted Methodists. The
sisters had formed views as to matrimony, and they enjoyed a curious
similarity of choice. They were to be the wives of preachers. But the
opportunity was long in coming, and they grew elderly. At length the
younger sister died, and so solved the problem of her future. The elder
sister was left for two years more alone with her confectionery. Then
she married a stranger who had come to one of the pits as gangsman. It
was a sad falling off. But at all events the gangsman was a local
preacher, and so the poor soul who took him for husband had effected a
compromise with her cherished ideal. It turned put that he was a
scoundrel as well, and had a wife living elsewhere. This disclosure
abridged his usefulness among the brethren, and he fled. Naturally, he
left his second wife behind, having previously secured a bill of sale on
her household effects. A few months elapsed, the woman was turned adrift
by her husband's creditors, and then a child was born. It was a poor
little thing--a boy. The good souls of the "connection" provided for it
until it was two years old, and afterward placed it in a charity school.
While the little fellow was there, his mother was struck down by a
mortal complaint. Then for the first time the poor ruined woman asked to
see her child. They brought the little one to her bedside, and it smiled
down into her dying face. "Oh, that it may please the Lord to make him a
preacher!" she said with a great effort. At a sign from the doctor the
child was taken away. The face pinched by cruel suffering quivered
slightly, the timid eyes worn by wasted hope softened and closed, and
the mother bid farewell to everything.

The