be "hanged by the neck till you are dead" would not have
sounded so appalling just at that time. So Imperence collapsed.

It is not our purpose to go much further into the details of the feast.
Suffice it to say that the poorest of the poor were there; that they
were encouraged to eat as much as possible, and allowed to carry away
what they could not eat, and there is reason to believe that, judging
from the prominence of pockets, a considerable quantity found its way to
hungry mouths which had been found incapable of attending the feast.

Among those who did great execution in the pocketing line was, as you
may well believe, little Martha. Finding, to her ineffable joy, that
there was no limit assigned to consumption, and that pocketing was not
esteemed a sin, she proceeded, after stuffing herself, to stuff to
overflowing the pocket with which she had previously wrestled, as
already described, and then attempted to fill the pocket on the other
side. She did so in utter and child-like forgetfulness of the fact that
she had recently lost several small articles in consequence of the
condition of that pocket, and her memory was not awakened until, having
just completed the satisfactory filling of it, she beheld, or rather
felt, the entire mass of edibles descending to the floor, proving that
the pocket was indeed a very bottomless pit.

"Never mind, little one," said Tom Westlake, coming forward at the
moment, for he had just closed the meeting; "I'll find a bag for you to
put it in. I hope the toe is all right."

"Oh yes, sir, thank you, it's quite well," answered Martha, blushing
through the dirt on her face, as she eyed the fallen food anxiously.

"Tell me now, little one," continued Tom, sitting down on the bench and
drawing the child gently towards him, "whom are you pocketing all these
good things for?--not for yourself, I'm quite sure of that."

"Oh dear, no, sir; it's for gran'father."

"Indeed. Is grandfather very poor?"

"Oh yes, sir, very, _very_ poor; an' he's got nobody but me to take care
of him."

"If that be so, who is taking care of him just now?" asked Matty, who
had joined her brother, leaving another "worker" at the harmonium to
play the people out,--a difficult thing to do, by the way, for the
people seemed very unwilling to go.

You see, among other things, Jack Frost and Sons could gain no footing
in that hall, and the people knew only too well that the firm was in
great force awaitin