thdrawn.

"Come in!" said the same voice, and the door was cautiously opened.

Mary, without hesitation, entered in time to see a thin old man, in a
tattered threadbare great-coat, with a red woollen cap on his head, and
slippered feet, his stockings hanging about his ankles, totter back to
an arm-chair from which he had risen, by the side of a small wood fire
on which a pot was boiling.

"That's all I've got for my dinner, with a few potatoes, but it's enough
to keep body and soul together, and what more does a wretched being like
me want?" he said in a querulous voice.

"I have brought you something nice, as aunt knows you can't cook
anything of the sort yourself, and you may eat it with more appetite
than you can the potatoes," said Mary, placing the contents of the
basket in some cracked plates on a rickety three-legged table which
stood near the old man's chair.

He eagerly eyed the tempting-looking pudding, a nicely cooked chop, and
a delicious jelly. "Yes, that's more like what I once used to have," he
muttered. "Thank you, thank you, little girl. I cannot buy such things
for myself, but I am glad to get them from others. Sit down, pray do,
after your walk," and he pointed to a high-backed oak chair, of very
doubtful stability and covered with dust. He saw that Mary on that
account hesitated to sit down, so rising he shambled forward and wiped
it with an old cotton handkerchief which he drew out of his pocket.
"There, now it's all clean and nice; you must sit down and rest, and see
me eat the food, so that you may tell your aunt I sold none of it. The
people say that I have parted with my coat off my back and the shoes
from my feet, but do not believe them; if I did, it was on account of my
poverty."

Mary made no reply; it appeared to her that the old man was
contradicting himself, and she did not wish to inquire too minutely into
the matter.

"This pudding must have cost a great deal," he continued, as he ate it
mouthful by mouthful; "there's the flour, the milk, the raisins, and the
sugar and spice, and other ingredients. Your aunt must be a rich woman
to afford so dainty a dish for a poor man like me?"

"No, I do not think Aunt Sally is at all rich, but she saves what little
she can to give to the sick and needy; she heard that you were ill, Mr
Shank, and had no one to care for you."

"That's true, little girl, no one cares for the old miser, as they call
me; and the boys, when I go into the