infant. She has uncovered its face, and
called me to look at it, and then she says:

' That's why I wouldn't have you come
anigh me, Mrs. Turnover. I didn't want
you to ha' known, but now this fever have
took me, and 'tis all over, and I can't rest
without askin' of the minister one thing."

Drawing back, I give place to my husband;
quite aloud, in a harsh, hollow voice,
Charlotte Ranger says to him this:

"I know I ha' been a great sinner, sir, so
don't tell me that. What I want to know is,
whether you think I shall get ALL the punishment
for this thing?" pointing without a
shadow of tenderness to the baby at her side.

The girl's manner so startles me, that I
burst into tears. They seem, somehow, to
soften her all at once. She still looks
anxiously at my husband, but the fierceness
has left her great black eyes, and in its stead
they are filled with a sorrowful, beseeching
expression. He opens his lips to answer her,
but she interrupts him gently, and raising
herself higher on the pillow, and pointing all
round the room at the three untenanted beds,
she says in a deprecating tone:

"Just think, sir, how my childhood and
my youth ha' been cared for! Ever since
I was an innocent babe, like this," touching
the dead child, " I ha' slept in this roomfull!
When I heerd your sermon a quarter
of a year ago—the last time as ever I was in
church, sir—about a Pure Life, I declared
I'd never go again, because I felt cut to
pieces; and yet I knew 'twasn't all my faut
that my life ha' been what t'have."

She paused for breath; then, gathering up
all her energies, said, with returning fierceness:

"And if I'm to be punished, what'll be
done to them as give us housen like these to
live in!"

Weak and exhausted, she lay down again
by the infant's side, and gently and tenderly
my dear husband probed the wounds, newly
agonising this tossed, weary, well-nigh lost
soul. How he answered her sad questions I
need not tell; nor how, before we left her, he
soothed and comforted her, through the
efficacy of that blessed Word, whose minister
he was. It was the last time we ever saw
Charlotte Ranger. The next morning we
were awakened by the sound of the passing
bell, and we learnt that she was dead.

The sin of country parishes! so much
quoted, and even made the subject of a tract
for dissemination among them—can it ever
be materially lessened, either by preaching.
by visiting, or by schools, or by tracts, while
the cottages remain in their present uncivilised
condition— while, from childhood to
youth, their poor inhabitants lie in those
rooms-full?

The scene changes; but memory
brings little Mrs. Appleby before me. Mrs.
Appleby has no children. She buried her
only child in the first year of her marriage;
and during that time of the fever, she was a
messenger between us and the sick beds
continually. It was mostly among the young
children that the disease was fatal. The
grown-up people had hard struggles with it,
and rose from it, as it were, wrecked and
shadowy; but, in general, rose from it
at last. I remember noticing to my husband,
that the poor people seemed very
resigned about the loss of their little children,
almost invariably answering, when I
condoled with them, "Ah, Ma'am, they never
could go better! " But, he shook his head,
and said he feared it was not all resignation
which made them so ready at this saying.
After a while, I began to think so too, though
the conviction settled sorrowfully into my
mind. Mrs. Appleby was, by no means, one
of these philosophical mothers. She certainly,
in her simple trustful soul, subscribed
to the truth that a child taken away is taken
for some wise reason, and is no doubt taken
to happiness; yet the tears of affectionate
remembrance and regret always gathered in
her eyes when she spoke of her little lost
one, and she would walk miles to do any
service for a sick child. But then, having
been early left an orphan, she had the good
fortune to have been brought up by a
comparatively well-to-do relation, the wife of the
village carrier, and with her she escaped
many of the contaminating influences which
beset her rougher neighbours.

The occasion on which she again appears
before me, is connected with the death-beds
of children. Her voice, ever cheerful, I hear
saying,

'" The Simmonses is down with the fever
dreadful, ma'am; the children have three of
'em got it, and m' uncle I do think t'ill go
hard with him. You know m' uncle's wife
aint nothin' of a nurse, ma'am, so I ha' been
doin' what little I can; but I should like as
you should see 'em, and adwise somethin'
which may be I can't think of."

I may remark, that, on account of her
uncle having married twice, and of his wife
being nearly as young as herself, Mrs.
Appleby never spoke of Mrs. Simmons as
her aunt, but mostly in full, as m' uncle's
second wife; and generally with the addition,
"which, with his lame girl, he ought
never to ha' married again, a-puttin' her,
poor thing, upon the House, and a-surroundin'
of hisselt with children, when he can't be
lookin' for anything, but bein' childish hisself
a'most."

I call to mind that I was dressed for walking
when she came, so I was not long in
making my way to the fever-stricken cottage,
with Mrs. Appleby trudging a little behind
me, in spite of all I could say to induce her
to come up to me; "because," she said, "she
couldn't think of being seen walking by the
side of a lady.

"The Simmonses lived at the end of a string