all Old English red letters, under it the two words, 'For
me.'

Alfred looked at it as if indeed it would be a great comfort to him to be
always reminded by the eye, of how 'He was wounded for our
transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities.'

He thanked Miss Jane with all his heart, and she and Ellen soon found a
place to hang it up well in his sight. It was a pretty bright sight to
see her insisting on holding the nail for it, and then playfully
pretending to shrink and fancy that Ellen would hammer her fingers.

Alfred could enjoy the sunshine of his sick-room again; and Ellen and his
mother down-stairs told Miss Selby, with many tears, of the happy change
that had come over him ever since he had resigned himself to give up
hopes of life. Mrs. King looked so peaceful and thankful, that little
Jane could hardly understand what it was that made her so much more at
rest.

Even Ellen, though her heart ached at the hope having gone out, and left
a dark place where it had been, felt the great relief from hour to hour
of not being fretted and snarled at for whatever she either did or left
undone. Thanks and smiles were much pleasanter payment than groans,
murmurs, and scoldings; and the brother and sister sometimes grew quite
cheerful and merry together, as Alfred lay raised up to look over the
hedge into the harvest-field across the meadow, where the reaper and his
wife might be seen gathering the brown ears round, and cutting them with
the sickle, and others going after to bind them into the glorious wheat
sheaves that leant against each other in heaps of blessed promise of
plenty.

Paul tried reaping; but the first thing he did was to make a terrible cut
in his hand, which the shuffler told him was for good luck! Some of the
women in the field bound it up, but he was good for nothing after it
except going after the cattle, and so he was likely to lose all the
chance of earning himself any better clothes in harvest-time.

Harold grumbled dreadfully that his mother could not spare him to go
harvesting beyond their own tiny quarter of an acre of wheat. The post
made it impossible for him to go out to work like the labourers; and
besides, his mother did not think he had gained much good in hay-time,
and wished to keep him from the boys.

Very hard he thought it; and to hear him grumble, any one would have
thought Mrs. King was a tyrant far worse than Farmer Shepherd, working
the flesh off his bones, taking aw