bbling a mouthful o' green meat on the queen's
highway, God bless her! I've done."

My lady endeavored to make Gampling hear that she would pay his fine
(if fined he were), but he refused to listen, and went off, shaking his
head and bemoaning the hard pass the world was come to.

"It is almost incredible the power of interference that is given to the
police," said Lady Latimer. "That wretched young Burt and his mother
were taken up by Cobb last week and made to walk to Hampton for lying on
the heath asleep in the sun; nothing else--that was their crime.
Fortunately, the magistrates had the humanity to discharge them."

"Poor souls! they are stamped for vagabonds. But young Burt will not
trouble police or magistrates much longer now," said the doctor.

In fact, he had that very morning done with troubling anybody. When Mr.
Carnegie pulled up ten minutes later at the door of a forlorn hovel
which was the present shelter of the once decent widow, he had no need
to dismount. "Ride on, Bessie," he said softly, and Bessie rode on.
Widow Burt came out to speak to the doctor, her lean face scorched to
the color of a brick, her clothing ragged, her hair unkempt, her eyes
wild as the eyes of a hunted animal.

"He's gone, sir," she said, pointing in-doors to where a long,
motionless figure seated in a chair was covered with a ragged patchwork
quilt. The doctor nodded gravely, paused, asked if she were alone.

"Mrs. Wallop sat up with us last night--she's very good, is Mrs.
Wallop--but first thing this morning Bunny came along to fetch her to
his wife, and she'd hardly got out o' sight when poor Tom stretched
hisself like a bairn that's waked up and is going to drop off to sleep
again, an' with one great sigh was dead. Miss Wort comes most mornings:
here she is."

Yes, there was Miss Wort, plunging head foremost through the heather by
way of making a short cut. She saw at a glance what had happened, and
taking both the poor mother's hands in her own, she addressed the doctor
with tears in her eyes and tremulous anger in her voice: "I shall always
say that it is a bad and cruel thing to send boys to prison, or anybody
whose temptation is hunger. How can we tell what we should do ourselves?
We are not wiser than the Bible, and we are taught to pray God lest we
be poor and steal. Tom would never have come to be what he was but for
that dreadful month at Whitchester. Instead of shutting up village-boys
and hurting their health