drink of water, and get to bed; you shan't
find me later in the morning for it." Nor did I. She was an
excellent servant, and performed more than was expected from her;
moreover, she always found time to read the Bible several times
in the day, and I seldom saw her occupied about any thing without
observing that she had placed it near her.

At last she fell sick with the cholera, and her life was
despaired of. I nursed her with great care, and sat up the
greatest part of two nights with her. She was often delirious,
and all her wandering thoughts seemed to ramble to heaven.
"I have been a sinner," she said, "but I am safe in the Lord
Jesus." When she recovered, she asked me to let her go into the
country for a few days, to change the air, and begged me to lend
her three dollars.

While she was absent a lady called on me, and enquired, with some
agitation, if my servant, Nancy Fletcher, were at home.
I replied that she was gone into the country. "Thank God," she
exclaimed, "never let her enter your doors again, she is the most
abandoned woman in the town: a gentleman who knows you, has been
told that she lives with you, and that she boasts of having the
power of entering your house at any hour of night." She told me
many other circumstances, unnecessary to repeat, but all tending
to prove that she was a very dangerous inmate.

I expected her home the next evening, and I believe I passed the
interval in meditating how to get rid of her without an
_eclaircissement_. At length she arrived, and all my study
having failed to supply me with any other reason than the real
one for dismissing her, I stated it at once. Not the slightest
change passed over her countenance, but she looked steadily at
me, and said, in a very civil tone, "I should like to know who
told you." I replied that it could be of no advantage to her to
know, and that I wished her to go immediately. "I am ready to
go," she said, in the same quiet tone, "but what will you do for
your three dollars?" "I must do without them, Nancy; good
morning to you." "I must just put up my things," she said, and
left the room. About half an hour afterwards, when we were all
assembled at dinner, she entered with her usual civil composed
air, "Well, I am come to wish you all goodbye," and with a
friendly good-humoured smile she left us.

This adventure frightened me so heartily, that, notwithstanding I
had the dread of cooking my own dinner before my eyes, I