ear Nell,' he murmured, 'when there
are bright red berries out of doors waiting for thee to pluck them!
Why dost thou lie so idle there, when thy little friends come creeping
to the door, crying "where is Nell--sweet Nell?"--and sob, and weep,
because they do not see thee. She was always gentle with children.
The wildest would do her bidding--she had a tender way with them,
indeed she had!'

Kit had no power to speak. His eyes were filled with tears.

'Her little homely dress,--her favourite!' cried the old man, pressing
it to his breast, and patting it with his shrivelled hand. 'She will
miss it when she wakes. They have hid it here in sport, but she shall
have it--she shall have it. I would not vex my darling, for the wide
world's riches. See here--these shoes--how worn they are--she kept
them to remind her of our last long journey. You see where the little
feet went bare upon the ground. They told me, afterwards, that the
stones had cut and bruised them. She never told me that. No, no, God
bless her! and, I have remembered since, she walked behind me, sir,
that I might not see how lame she was--but yet she had my hand in hers,
and seemed to lead me still.'

He pressed them to his lips, and having carefully put them back again,
went on communing with himself--looking wistfully from time to time
towards the chamber he had lately visited.

'She was not wont to be a lie-abed; but she was well then. We must
have patience. When she is well again, she will rise early, as she
used to do, and ramble abroad in the healthy morning time. I often
tried to track the way she had gone, but her small footstep left no
print upon the dewy ground, to guide me. Who is that? Shut the door.
Quick!--Have we not enough to do to drive away that marble cold, and
keep her warm!'

The door was indeed opened, for the entrance of Mr Garland and his
friend, accompanied by two other persons. These were the schoolmaster,
and the bachelor. The former held a light in his hand. He had, it
seemed, but gone to his own cottage to replenish the exhausted lamp, at
the moment when Kit came up and found the old man alone.

He softened again at sight of these two friends, and, laying aside the
angry manner--if to anything so feeble and so sad the term can be
applied--in which he had spoken when the door opened, resumed his
former seat, and subsided, by little and little into the old action,
and the old, dull, wandering sound.

Of the