they are taught
to despise manual labor, and to grow up without moral principle.
Our schools are like dockyards, whence expensively-equipped vessels
are launched provided with everything except ballast, which will
prevent their capsizing in the first squall. The Vicar of Witley
had been one of those men, in advance of his time, who had initiated
this system.

Whatever of knowledge of good, and of discipline of conscience
Mehetabel possessed, was obtained from Mrs. Susanna Verstage, or
from old Betty Chivers.

We are told that if we cast our bread on the waters, we shall find
it after many days. But simple souls are too humble to recognize
it.

So was it with Goodie Chivers.

That Mehetabel, through all her trials, acted as a woman of
principle, clung to what she knew to be right, was due very largely
to the old dame's instructions, but Betty was too lowly-minded for
one instant to allow this, even to suspect it.

Our Board School masters and mistresses have quite as little
suspicion that they have sowed the seed which sprung up in the
youths who are dismissed from offices for defalcation, and the
girls who leave menial service to walk the streets.

Mrs. Chivers was glad to see Mehetabel when she entered. She had
heard talk about her--that she had run away from her husband, and
was wandering through the country with her babe; and having a
tender heart, and a care for all her old pupils, she had felt
anxious concerning her.

Mehetabel pleaded to be taken in for the night, and to this Mrs.
Chivers readily consented. She would share her bed with the mother
and the child, as well as her crust of bread and cup of thin tea.
Of milk, in her poverty, the old woman allowed herself but a few
drops, and of butter with her bread none at all.

Yet what she had, that she cheerfully divided with Mehetabel.

On the morrow, after a restful sleep, the young wife started for a
silk mill on one of those Hammer ponds that occupied a depression
in the Common. These ponds were formed at the time when iron was
worked in the district, and the ponds, as their name implies, were
for the storage of water to beat out the iron by means of large
hammers, set in motion by a wheel. When these ponds were constructed
is not known. The trees growing on the embankments that hold back
the water are of great size and advanced age.

One of these ponds, at the time of our tale, was utilized for a
silk mill.

On reaching the silk mill, she timid