action at all. I sent her back to inquire in
the neighbourhood what was become of the family that lived in that
house; and if they were removed, where they lived, and what
circumstances they were in; and, withal, if she could, what became of
the poor children, and how they lived, and where; how they had been
treated; and the like.

She brought me back word upon this second going, that she heard, as to
the family, that the husband, who, though but uncle-in-law to the
children, had yet been kindest to them, was dead; and that the widow was
left but in mean circumstances--that is to say, she did not want, but
that she was not so well in the world as she was thought to be when her
husband was alive; that, as to the poor children, two of them, it seems,
had been kept by her, that is to say, by her husband, while he lived,
for that it was against her will, that we all knew; but the honest
neighbours pitied the poor children, they said, heartily; for that their
aunt used them barbarously, and made them little better than servants in
the house to wait upon her and her children, and scarce allowed them
clothes fit to wear.

These were, it seems, my eldest and third, which were daughters; the
second was a son, the fourth a daughter, and the youngest a son.

To finish the melancholy part of this history of my two unhappy girls,
she brought me word that as soon as they were able to go out and get any
work they went from her, and some said she had turned them out of doors;
but it seems she had not done so, but she used them so cruelly that they
left her, and one of them went to service to a neighbour's, a little way
off, who knew her, an honest, substantial weaver's wife, to whom she was
chambermaid, and in a little time she took her sister out of the
Bridewell of her aunt's house, and got her a place too.

This was all melancholy and dull. I sent her then to the weaver's house,
where the eldest had lived, but found that, her mistress being dead, she
was gone, and nobody knew there whither she went, only that they heard
she had lived with a great lady at the other end of the town; but they
did not know who that lady was.

These inquiries took us up three or four weeks, and I was not one jot
the better for it, for I could hear nothing to my satisfaction. I sent
her next to find out the honest man who, as in the beginning of my story
I observed, made them be entertained, and caused the youngest to be
fetched from the town where w