ver have been so starved as to cry about it."

"Neither grandmother nor I have had anything to eat since morning, and
I am very hungry."

"But what are you doing here?" inquired our hero.

"Just gathering some sticks, to make a fire for grandmother, who is
sick, and cannot spin now," answered the boy, still weeping.

"Have you no parents to take care of you?" again asked William. "What
is your name, and where do you live?"

The boy answered that his name was Ned Graham, and named a street at
no great distance from the place where they were, and which was well
known to William. He said that his parents were both dead; that while
his father, who was a carpenter, lived, they had been very
comfortable; but that now, as his grandmother was very old, and
himself too young to do anything to help to make a livelihood, they
were often hungry. "Grandmother spun and knit until she became sick,
and the neighbours still sent us in something; but they are poor
themselves, grandmother says; and this morning, when old Annie
Michael, who supports herself and children by washing, sent us some of
her breakfast, grandmother said she could not bear to take it."

William had no rejoinder to make, for self-reproach was busy at his
heart. But a little while ago he had thought himself "the most unhappy
being on the face of the earth," and now he could not help feeling
that the condition of poor little Ned was far more wretched than his
own. His food, indeed, was coarse and scanty enough; but then he had
his regular meals, while this poor child and his infirm grandmother
were obliged to subsist on the charity of the poor, which could not be
very regularly or liberally administered.

"I am surely very ungrateful to my heavenly Father," said he, half
aloud. "Hereafter, when I am disposed to complain of my food, I will
think of this poor boy. But stop; I had forgotten the rolls Mrs.
Burton gave me. I am not very hungry now;" and taking the packet from
his bosom pocket, he gave it to the little starveling.

"I am not to have them all?" said Ned, as he broke one off, and began
to eat it. "Do you not want some yourself?"

"No," replied William; "I will get some supper when I go home; so
carry half of them to your grandmother, for you are both hungry, and
have no supper to expect."

And now, although hungry himself, with what pleasure did he give his
rolls to one whose want was far greater than his own! He felt, in this
denying of self, how