t of their dotage; and, indeed, this poor woman's
child was all that was left to love her in this world;--so we must not
think it hard that she turned a deaf ear to her good friends, who
sought to prove to her that Dolph would come to a halter.

To do the varlet justice, too, he was strongly attached to his parent.
He would not willingly have given her pain on any account; and when he
had been doing wrong, it was but for him to catch his poor mother's
eye fixed wistfully and sorrowfully upon him, to fill his heart with
bitterness and contrition. But he was a heedless youngster, and could
not, for the life of him, resist any new temptation to fun and
mischief. Though quick at his learning, whenever he could be brought
to apply himself, yet he was always prone to be led away by idle
company, and would play truant to hunt after birds'-nests, to rob
orchards, or to swim in the Hudson.

In this way he grew up, a tall, lubberly boy; and his mother began to
be greatly perplexed what to do with him, or how to put him in a way
to do for himself; for he had acquired such an unlucky reputation,
that no one seemed willing to employ him.

Many were the consultations that she held with Peter de Groodt, the
clerk and sexton, who was her prime counsellor. Peter was as much
perplexed as herself, for he had no great opinion of the boy, and
thought he would never come to good. He at one time advised her to
send him to sea--a piece of advice only given in the most desperate
cases; but Dame Heyliger would not listen to such an idea; she could
not think of letting Dolph go out of her sight. She was sitting one
day knitting by her fireside, in great perplexity, when the sexton
entered with an air of unusual vivacity and briskness. He had just
come from a funeral. It had been that of a boy of Dolph's years, who
had been apprentice to a famous German doctor, and had died of a
consumption. It is true, there had been a whisper that the deceased
had been brought to his end by being made the subject of the doctor's
experiments, on which he was apt to try the effects of a new compound,
or a quieting draught. This, however, it is likely, was a mere
scandal; at any rate, Peter de Groodt did not think it worth
mentioning; though, had we time to philosophize, it would be a curious
matter for speculation, why a doctor's family is apt to be so lean and
cadaverous, and a butcher's so jolly and rubicund.

Peter de Groodt, as I said before, entered the h