the flourishing maltster of Skelton was a little surprised, when,
fifteen years later, he learnt that he was executor to a will
bequeathing many vanished hundreds of pounds, and guardian to a young
girl whom he could not remember ever to have seen.

He was a sensible, hard-headed man of the world; having a very fair
proportion of conscience as consciences go; indeed, perhaps more than
many people; for he had some ideas of duty extending to the circle
beyond his own family; and did not, as some would have done, decline
acting altogether, but speedily summoned the creditors, examined
into the accounts, sold up the farming-stock, and discharged all the
debts; paid about L80 into the Skelton bank for a week, while he
inquired for a situation or apprenticeship of some kind for poor
heart-broken Ruth; heard of Mrs Mason's; arranged all with her in two
short conversations; drove over for Ruth in his gig; waited while she
and the old servant packed up her clothes; and grew very impatient
while she ran, with her eyes streaming with tears, round the garden,
tearing off in a passion of love whole boughs of favourite China and
damask roses, late flowering against the casement-window of what
had been her mother's room. When she took her seat in the gig, she
was little able, even if she had been inclined, to profit by her
guardian's lectures on economy and self-reliance; but she was quiet
and silent, looking forward with longing to the night-time, when, in
her bedroom, she might give way to all her passionate sorrow at being
wrenched from the home where she had lived with her parents, in that
utter absence of any anticipation of change, which is either the
blessing or the curse of childhood. But at night there were four
other girls in her room, and she could not cry before them. She
watched and waited till, one by one, they dropped off to sleep, and
then she buried her face in the pillow, and shook with sobbing grief;
and then she paused to conjure up, with fond luxuriance, every
recollection of the happy days, so little valued in their uneventful
peace while they lasted, so passionately regretted when once gone for
ever; to remember every look and word of the dear mother, and to moan
afresh over the change caused by her death;--the first clouding in
of Ruth's day of life. It was Jenny's sympathy on this first night,
when awakened by Ruth's irrepressible agony, that had made the bond
between them. But Ruth's loving disposition, con