at measure excluded by a number of small rags which occupied
the place of the diamond panes that had departed many months before. A
child, ill-clad, in fragments of clothes, with long and dirty hair,
unclean face, and naked feet, cried at the door, and loud talking was
heard within. Mr Fairman knocked with his knuckle before he entered, and
a gruff voice desired him to "come in." A stout fellow, with a surly
countenance and unshaven beard, was sitting over an apology for a fire,
and a female of the same age and condition was near him. She bore an
unhappy infant in her arms, whose melancholy peakish face, not
twelve-months old, looked already conscious of prevailing misery. There
was no flooring to the room, which contained no one perfect or complete
article of furniture, but symptoms of many, from the blanketless bed
down to the solitary coverless saucepan. Need I add, that the man who
sat there, the degraded father of the house, had his measure of liquor
before him, and that the means of purchasing it were never wanting,
however impudently charity might be called upon to supply the starving
family with bread?

The man did not rise upon our entrance. He changed colour very slightly,
and looked more ignorantly surly, or tried to do so.

"Well, Jacob Warden," said the incumbent, "you are determined to brave
it out, I see." The fellow did not answer.

"When I told you yesterday that your idleness and bad habits were
bringing you to ruin, you answered--_I was a liar_. I then said, that
when you were sorry for having uttered that expression, you might come
to the parsonage and tell me so. You have not been yet--I am grieved to
say it. What have I ever done to you, Jacob Warden, that you should
behave so wickedly? I do not wish you to humble yourself to me, but I
should have been glad to see you do your duty. If I did mine, perhaps, I
should give you up, and see you no more, for I fear you are a hardened
man."

"He hasn't had no work for a month," said the wife, in a tone of
upbraiding, as if the minister had been the wilful cause of it.

"And whose fault is that, Mrs Warden? There is work enough for sober and
honest men in the parish. Why was your husband turned away from the
Squire's?"

"Why, all along of them spoons. They never could prove it agin him,
that's one thing--though they tried it hard enough."

"Come, come, Mrs Warden, if you love that man, take the right way to
show it. Think of your children."

"Yes;