ty pounds per annum.] Roger, too,
was getting on in years, with a blacker prospect for the future than
when he first stood behind a plough-tail. Then there were many wants
unsatisfied, which a bit of gold might buy; and his wife teased him to
be doing something better. Thus was it come at length to pass, that,
although he had endured so many years, he now got discontented at his
penury;--what human heart can blame him?--and with murmurings came
doubt; with doubt of Providence, desire of lucre; so the sunshine of
religion faded from his path;--what mortal mind can wonder?

CHAPTER II.

THE FAMILY; THE HOME; AND MORE REPININGS.

NOW, if Malthus and Martineau be verily the pundits that men
think them, Roger had twice in his life done a very foolish thing: he
had sinned against society, statistics, and common sense, by a two-fold
marriage. The wife of his youth (I am afraid he married early) had once
been kitchen-maid at the Hall; but the sudden change from living
luxuriously in a great house, to the griping poverty of a cotter's
hovel, had changed, in three short years, the buxom country girl into an
emaciated shadow of her former self, and the sorrowing husband buried
her in her second child-bed. The powers of the parish clapped their
hands; political economy was glad; prudence chuckled; and a
coarse-featured farmer (he meant no ill), who occasionally had given
Roger work, heartlessly bade him be thankful that his cares were the
fewer and his incumbrance was removed; "Ay, and Heaven take the babies
also to itself," the Herodian added. But Acton's heart was broken!
scarcely could he lift up his head; and his work, though sturdy as
before, was more mechanical, less high-motived: and many a year of
dreary widowhood he mourned a loss all the greater, though any thing but
bitterer, for the infants so left motherless. To these, now grown into a
strapping youth and a bright-eyed graceful girl, had he been the
tenderest of nurses, and well supplied the place of her whom they had
lost. Neighbours would have helped him gladly--sometimes did; and many
was the hinted offer (disinterested enough, too, for in that match
penury must have been the settlement, and starvation the dower), of
giving them a mother's kindly care; but Roger could not quite so soon
forget the dead: so he would carry his darlings with him to his work,
and feed them with his own hard hands; the farmers winked at it, and
never said a word against the tin