strychnine. 'I'll steal a march on t'other miser,'
sis he; and that's you: t' his brain flew the
strychnine: his brain sint it to his spinal marrow:
and we found my lorrd bent like a bow, and his
jaw locked, and nearer knowin the great secret
than any man in England will be this year to
live: and sairves th' assassinating old vagabin
right."

"Heaven forgive you, Doctor," said Mrs.
Maxley, half mechanically.

"For curin a murrderer? Not likely."

Mrs. Maxley, who had shown signs of singular
uneasiness during Sampson's explanation, now
rose, and said in a very peculiar tone she must go
home directly.

Mrs. Dodd seemed to enter into her feelings,
and made her go in the fly, taking care to pay
the fare and the driver out of her own purse. As
the woman got into the fly, Sampson gave her a
piece of friendly and practical advice. "Nixt
time he has a mind to breakfast on strychnine,
you tell me; and I'll put a pinch of arsenic in the
saltcellar, and cure him safe as the Bank. But
this time he'd have been did, and stiff, long
before such a slow ajint as arsenic could get a hold
on um."

They sat down to luncheon: but neither Alfred
nor Julia fed much, except upon sweet stolen
looks; and soon the active Sampson jumped up,
and invited Alfred to go round his patients.
Alfred could not decline, but made his adieux
with regret so tender, and undisguised, that
Julia's sweet eyes filled, and her soft hand
instinctively pressed his at parting to console
him. She blushed at herself afterwards; but at
the time she was thinking only of him.

Maxley and his wife came up in the evening
with a fee. They had put their heads together;
and proffered one guinea. "Man and wife be
one flesh, you know, Doctor."

Sampson, whose natural choler was constantly
checked by his humour, declined this profuse
proposal. "Here's vanity!" said he: "now
do you really think your two lives are worth a
guinea?  Why it's 252 pence! 908 farthings!"

The pair affected disappointment; vilely.

At all events he must accept this basket of
gudgeons Maxley had brought along. Being
poisoned was quite out of Maxley's daily routine,
and had so unsettled him, that he had got up,
and gone fishing to the amazement of the
parish.

Sampson inspected the basket: "Why they
are only fish!" said he, "I was in hopes they
were pashints." He accepted the gudgeons, and
inquired how Maxley got poisoned. It came out
that Mrs. Maxley, seeing her husband set apart
a portion of his Welsh rabbit, had "grizzled,"
and asked what that was for: and being told "for
the mouse," and to "mind her own business,"
had grizzled still more, and furtively conveyed a
portion back into the pan for her master's own
use. She had been quaking dismally all the
afternoon at what she had done; but finding
Maxley—hard but just—did not attack her for
an involuntary fault, she now brazened it out,
and said, "Men didn't ought to have poison in
the house unbeknown to their wives. Jem had
got no more than he worked for, &c. But,
like a woman, she vowed vengeance on the
mouse: whereupon Maxley threatened her with
the marital correction of neck-twisting, if she
laid a finger on it.

"My eyes be open now to what a poor
creature do feel as dies poisoned. Let her a be:
there's room in our place for her and we."

Next day he met Alfred, and thanked him
with warmth, almost with emotion: "There
ain't many in Barkinton as ever done me a good
turn, Master Alfred; you be one on em: you
comes after the captain in my book now."

Alfred suggested that his claims were humble
compared with Sampson's.

"No, no," said Maxley, going down to hiS
whisper, and looking monstrous wise: "Doctor
didn't go out of his—business—for me: you
did."

The sage miser's gratitude had not time to
die a natural death before circumstances occurred
to test it. On the morning of that eventful day,
which concluded my last chapter, he received a
letter from Canada. His wife was out with
eggs; so he caught little Rose Sutton, that had
more than once spelled an epistle for him; and
she read it out in a loud and reckless whine:

"'At — noon—this—very—daie—Muster—
Hardie's a-g-e-n-t—aguent—d-i-s dis, h-o-n—
Honoured—dis-Honoured—a—bill; and sayed.
There—were—no—more—asses.'"

"Mercy on us! But it can't be asses,
wench: drive your spe-ad into 't again."

"'A-s-s-e-t-s. Assets.'"

"Ah! Go an! go an!"

"'Now—Fatther—if—you—leave—a s-h-i-I-l-i-n-g,
shilling—at—Hardie's—after—this—
b-l-a-m-e—ble-am—your—self—not—me—for
—this—is—the—waie—the—r-o-g-u-e-s—rogews
—all—bre-ak—they—go—at—a—d-i-s-t-a-n-c-e
—distance—first—and—then—at—h-o-m-e—
whuoame.—Dear—fatther'—lawk o' daisy what
ails you, Daddy Maxley? You be as white as
a Sunday smock. Be you poisoned, again, if
you please?"

."Worse than that—worse!" groaned Maxley,
trembling all over. "Hush!—hold your tongue!
Give me that letter! Don't you never tell
nobody nothing of what you have been a reading
to me, and I'll—I'll—It's only Jem's fun:
he is allus running his rigs—that's a good wench
now, and I'll give ye a halfpenny."

"La, Daddy," said the child, opening her
eyes, "I never heeds what I re-ads: I be
wrapt up in the spelling. Dear heart, what a
sight of long words folks puts in a letter, more
than ever drops out of their mouths; which
their fingers be longer than their tongues I do
suppose."

Maxley hailed this information characteristically.

"Then we'll say no more about the
halfpenny."

At this, Rose raised a lamentable cry, and
pearly tears gushed forth.

"There, there," said Maxley, deprecatingly;