I should have been by this time if
you had not come to save me."

"It is the way to amend; the first step I may say, to find out and own
that we are bad; so, neighbour, I am truly glad to hear you own that you
are bad," said Farmer Grey. "But I must not let you talk now. Come, we
must help your man there. He seems to be badly hurt."

"He wouldn't hold on to the last, as I told him," said Mark.

"Well, Sam; what harm has come to you?"

"Broken a leg, to my belief;" growled out Sam.

Farmer Grey found that Sam had indeed, as he said, broken a leg. Mark
was now able to get up and walk, and he went to the house to call his
son. Ben had been out till late, and had come home wet, and did not
like to be called up.

"Sam Green has broken his leg. Come down quickly I say," cried out
Mark.

"Let him sit still and mend it, while I put on my clothes," said Ben
from the window.

Farmer Grey heard him. "That young man will, I fear, not come to a good
end," he thought. "When I hear a man laugh at the pain or grief of
others, I am sure that his heart is not right towards God or towards his
fellow-man."

Ben at last came out and got a hurdle, and he and his father, with
Farmer Grey, put Sam Green on it, and bore him to the house. Sam cried
out that they were killing him; so when Farmer Grey heard this he put
his hand under Sam's leg, and spoke to him just as kind and soft as if
he had been a little child. Sam did not say anything, but he ceased to
growl, or to cry out that he was hurt. Mary had heard her father call
out, and she was at the door when they got there. Farmer Grey had not
before this spoken to her. He now watched her as she went about the
house, making ready the bed in the spare room for poor Sam, and heard
her speak so gently and so kind to him.

"That is a good girl," he thought. "Can she be the miller's daughter?
If so, she seems very unlike Mark and his son. I must see more of her."

As soon as Sam was placed on the bed, Ben was sent off to fetch the
surgeon to set his leg.

"Tell him that I beg he will make haste, for the poor man is in great
pain," said Farmer Grey, as Ben got on his horse.

"I will just break my fast with you, miller, that I may help poor Sam,"
said Farmer Grey. "We must get his trousers cut open, and his boots
off; and it may be we shall have to cut them off also. It does not do
to pull at a broken leg."

Sam did not at all like to have his trousers cut open or his