e like a
prolonged farewell than a gladsome restoration.

She was saved by what we call chance; for it had not been in her design
to save herself. The hand was firm to help her to the deadly draught. As
far as could be conjectured, she had drunk it between hurried readings
from her mother's Bible; the one true companion to which she had often
clung, always half-availingly. The Bible was found by her side, as if
it had fallen from the chair before which she knelt to read her last
quickening verses, and had fallen with her. One arm was about it; one
grasped the broken phial with its hideous label.

It was uncomplainingly registered among the few facts very distinctly
legible in Master Gammon's memory, that for three entire weeks he had
no dumplings for dinner at the farm; and although, upon a computation,
articles of that description, amounting probably to sixty-three (if
there is any need for our being precise), were due to him, and would
necessarily be for evermore due to him, seeing that it is beyond all
human and even spiritual agency to make good unto man the dinner he has
lost, Master Gammon uttered no word to show that he was sensible of a
slight, which was the only indication given by him of his knowledge of a
calamity having changed the order of things at the farm. On the day when
dumplings reappeared, he remarked, with a glance at the ceiling: "Goin'
on better--eh, marm?"

"Oh! Mas' Gammon," Mrs. Sumfit burst out; "if I was only certain you
said your prayers faithful every night!" The observation was apparently
taken by Master Gammon to express one of the mere emotions within her
bosom, for he did not reply to it.

She watched him feeding in his steady way, with the patient bent back,
and slowly chopping old grey jaws, and struck by a pathos in the sight,
exclaimed,--

"We've all been searched so, Mas' Gammon! I feel I know everything
that's in me. I'd say, I couldn't ha' given you dumplin's and tears; but
think of our wickedness, when I confess to you I did feel spiteful at
you to think that you were wiltin' to eat the dumplin's while all of
us mourned and rocked as in a quake, expecting the worst to befall; and
that made me refuse them to you. It was cruel of me, and well may you
shake your head. If I was only sure you said your prayers!"

The meaning in her aroused heart was, that if she could be sure Master
Gammon said his prayers, so as to be searched all through by them,
as she was herself, and to f