e. A few old and middle-aged people walked occasionally to the
nearest place of worship, some two miles off; but nine-tenths of the
villagers went nowhere on a Sunday--that is to say, nowhere where they
could hear anything to do them good, though they were ready enough to
leave their homes on the Sabbath to congregate where they could drink
and game together, and sing profane and immoral songs.

So Bridgepath was rightly called "a lost place;" and indeed it had been
"lost" for so many years, that there seemed scarcely the remotest
prospect of its being "found" by any one disposed to do it good.
However, even in this dark spot there was a corner from which there
shone a little flickering light. John Price and his family tenanted a
tolerably roomy cottage at the entrance to the village, close to the
horse-pond. The poor man had seen better days, having acted as steward
to the young squire from the time he came into the property till he
disappeared with his infant son and an old nurse who had lived for
nearly two generations on the Riverton estate. Poor John had served the
squire's father also as steward, and loved the young master as if he had
been his own child; and it was known that, when ruin fell on the young
man, the poor steward was dragged down also to poverty, having been
somehow or other involved in his employer's ruin. But never did John
Price utter a word that would throw light on this subject to anyone
outside his own family. All he would let people know was, that the
squire had left him his cottage rent-free for his life,--which was,
indeed, all that the master had to leave his faithful servant.

The worthy man had struggled hard to keep himself and his family; but
now he was bed-ridden, and had been so for some five or six years past.
However, he had a patient wife, who made the most and best of a very
little, and loving children, some of them in service, who helped him
through. And he found a measure of peace in studying his old, well-worn
Bible, though he read it as yet but ignorantly. Still, what light he
had he strove to impart to those of the villagers who came to sit and
condole with him; while his wife, and an unmarried daughter who lived at
home, both deploring the wickedness of Bridgepath, tried to throw in a
word of scriptural truth now and then, for the sake of instructing and
improving their heathenish neighbours.

It may be well imagined, then, with what interest all the villagers, but