en-four. Her husband's mother was a Higgins."

The clergyman smiled upon her sadly, nodded assent, and, laying her hand
gently upon her lap, turned away.

"Her mind's a runnin' on old times, and she don't hear a word you say,
sir," observed Job, in his peculiar half-whisper, slow, subdued, but
very distinct. "She don't take much notice o' what's goin' on now-days,
and we have to screech to her to make her understand anything. A kind
old lady, sir, but past her time, and very deaf."

Mr. Royden squeezed a drop of moisture out of his eye, and coughed.
Meanwhile the aged woman relapsed into the dreamy state from which she
had been momentarily aroused, drawing the dingy blanket around her cold
limbs, and whispering over some dim memory of the century gone by.

XV.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF A WOODEN LEG.

"You have a good trade, friend Bowen," said Father Brighthopes, drawing
his chair near the shoemaker's bench.

"It does capital for me!" replied Job, cheerfully. "Since I got a
bayonet through my knee at Lundy's Lane, I find I get on best in the
world sittin' still."

He smiled pleasantly over this feeble attempt at humor, and arranged
some waxed ends, which, for convenience, he had hung upon his wooden
leg.

"Did you learn shoe-making before you went soldiering?" asked the
clergyman.

"I'd been a 'prentice. But I tired of the monotony. So I quarreled with
my trade, and fought my _last_ at Lundy's Lane, as I tell people," said
Job, with twinkling eyes.

"You got the worst of it?"

"All things considered I did. This fighting is bad business; and, you
see, I decidedly put my foot in it."

Job touched his wooden leg significantly, to illustrate the joke.

"You seem merry over your misfortune," observed Father Brighthopes.

"Better be merry than sad, you know. There's no use o' complainin' of
Providence, when my own folly tripped me up. My understanding is not so
lame as that."

It was amusing to see with what a relish the poor fellow cracked these
little jokes of his over his infirmity. To get hold of someone who had
never heard them before, and could laugh at them as well as if they were
quite fresh and new, seemed a great happiness to him; and the clergyman
did not fail to appreciate and encourage his humor.

"On the whole," said the latter, "you made a bad bargain when you traded
your hammer and awl for a musket and cartridge-box?"

Job's eyes glistened. He rubbed his hands together with delight. The