ans," the school-mistress said, when Harley addressed
her, "put under my care by the parish, and more promising children I
never saw. Their father, sir, was a farmer here in the neighbourhood,
and a sober, industrious man he was; but nobody can help misfortunes.
What with bad crops and bad debts, his affairs went to wreck, and both
he and his wife died of broken hearts. And a sweet couple they were,
sir. There was not a properer man to look on in the county than John
Edwards, and so, indeed, were all the Edwardses of South Hill."

"Edwards! South Hill!" said the old soldier, in a languid voice, and
fell back in the arms of the astonished Harley.

He soon recovered, and folding his orphan grandchildren in his arms,
cried, "My poor Jack, art thou gone--"

"My dear old man," said Harley, "Providence has sent you to relieve
them. It will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you."

"Yes, indeed, sir," answered the boy. "Father, when he was a-dying, bade
God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send him to
support us. I have told sister," said he, "that she should not take it
so to heart. She can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig. We
shall not starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather
neither."

The little girl cried afresh. Harley kissed off her tears, and wept
between every kiss.

_V.--The Man of Feeling is Jealous_

Shortly after Harley's return home his servant Peter came into his room
one morning with a piece of news on his tongue.

"The morning is main cold, sir," began Peter.

"Is it?" said Harley.

"Yes, sir. I have been as far as Tom Dowson's to fetch some barberries.
There was a rare junketting at Tom's last night among Sir Harry Benson's
servants. And I hear as how Sir Harry is going to be married to Miss
Walton. Tom's wife told it me, and, to be sure, the servants told her;
but, of course, it mayn't be true, for all that."

"Have done with your idle information," said Harley. "Is my aunt come
down into the parlour to breakfast?"

"Yes, sir."

"Tell her I'll be with her immediately."

His aunt, too, had been informed of the intended match between Sir Harry
Benson and Miss Walton, Harley learnt.

"I have been thinking," said she, "that they are distant relations, for
the great-grandfather of this Sir Harry, who was knight of the shire in
the reign of Charles I., married a daughter of the Walton family."

Harley answered drily that it migh