from a rag-shop; and, what was worse, they refused to take it back! Distresses fell thick upon them, and they returned saddened home. Their surprise may be imagined when, on their near approach, they saw smoke issue from their chimney: Adam rubbed his eyes, and Martha thought it an optical delusion; but no, smoke-real smoke curled from their chimney-top,-a phenomenon scarcely to be believed. Martha hastened home, threw the door open, and started back as she saw the figure of a young man intently occupied in cooking some mutton-chops! Mutton chops!- Martha hadn't tasted them for years; and to see her hearth desecrated, and a fire in the grate large enough to have cooked a joint by,—a whole year's fuel crackling under two mutton-chops! Human nature was outraged, and Martha burst into the room. What damage she might have done either to herself or the stranger, it is useless to determine; for, rising from his occupation, the young man turned as the door opened, and, in spite of the drummer's coat, Sydney recognised his father. But Adam saw nothing but the chops; the sight of food upon his table had overcome him, and he stood rapt and wondering. Sydney Thornton had, by some strange good fortune, obtained a few pounds for what had cost him months of application and study; and a visit to his father was his first thought. He knew the old man's way of old; but still, though miserly, Adam was not bad-hearted, and at any other time would have been glad to see his son, but Martha had reformed him from the ways of weakness. Sydney traced his way to the old house, and entered its doors; they were not even latched, for they kept nothing worth stealing: the grate was black, but not with smoke; and Sydney, hungered with his ride, and anxious to see his father on his return home, purchased meat and commenced the task of cooking. He was an author, and knew what chops were too well to slight them! With patient industry he lit a fire from a heap of sticks piled in a corner, and commenced broiling them upon a rusty pair of tongs. His task was nearly done, and so were the chops, when Martha entered the room, and looked her horror of the deed full in the glutton's face. Little importance as our readers may be disposed to attribute to Sydney's cooking mutton-chops, he had better have thrust his hand into the fire that broiled them; for by so doing he laid the first stone of a ruin that fell and crushed him. The few days he stayed beneath his father's roof, Martha fastened upon Adam's skirts, fearing the old man might yearn towards his son,--a son, as Martha thought, bitten by the vice of waste; and giving money to his like, was pouring water in a pitcher that was cracked. Sydney Thornton returned to town, where, we grieve to relate, he married. He fell--not into a ditch, but worse-in love with a beauti. ful and gentle being, and, like most things beautiful, fragile as she was fair. Sydney married; and Adam from that day writ him down as past redemption. Old Adam fell sick; the sickness of wasted strength came upon him, for the oil of his life was dry, and his existence flickered like a wasted lamp, there he lay upon his hard bed without nourishment, without those soothing comforts which are to the sick what the sick only know. His days were numbered, his will was made, and Martha Mites left sole executor. Alas! where was Sydney? Martha was out, and Adam lay sick--dying in his bed. His son ! his own and only son !--the old man's brow grew heavy, and his eyes filled. Foolish Martha Mites to leave so rich a man while life was in him! Rich men should never be left to die alone; they seldom are, for loving heirs are always crowding round the couch, to smooth the pillow, or to hold the head: but Martha-. She was returning home, had reached indeed the threshold when the door opened, and a little old man dressed in black came out; their eyes met, the little man in the kindest manner possible told her that Adam was dying. Martha entered his darkened room, and there he lay gasping for breath, his mouth wide open, and the rattles working within his throat; his hands, bony and dry, clutched up the clothes; his eyes glazed as they stared upon her with a peculiar meaning, and they had a meaning; and he sank back-a corpse! 66 Adam was buried, and at the least possible expense; Martha, as mourning costs money, made her countenance answer a double pur. and decked her face in decent sorrow." pose, The dead man's will was to be read; the room was full of anxious relatives, and others who expected." A tall pale-faced young man, dressed in deep mourning, stood within the room; it was Sydney Thornton! The will was read; Adam died worth fifty thousand pounds, and he bequeathed to his loving son, Sydney Thornton, the sum of-he stood breathless with suspense-one shilling! To Martha Mites, all beside; and Sydney was disinherited! His hands were clasped upon his forehead, his clothes were thrown open, his pale face now looked ghastly; he had fainted away: Martha, who delighted in acts of charity, gave him a basin of water! Here was the consequence of eating mutton-chops! * Months have passed, and it is winter when we resume the thread of our history, and we find Martha still in the old house, lying in bed two-thirds of the day to save firing; the rest she passed at a cobbler's shed, where, over a pan of coals, she warmed her blue hands, and munched the crust she had picked up in her way thither. But it was astonishing the friends she acquired!-many, very many families, and of the first consequence in the town, pleased, no doubt, with the singularity of her conduct, invited her to their table,—she was so peculiar. And only to think of their condescension !--they would even call upon her, sit by turns upon a three-legged stool, chat with her, and give her various trifles. After this, who shall say people of consequence are proud? we ask our readers, in the simplicity of truth, was this a proof of pride? With the pen for his caterer, Sydney Thornton found his viands scanty, and his meals irregular. The boasted produce of the brainbread and cheese, failed him in his need; and he, with his sickly wife, often dined without the latter luxury. Fortune looked dark upon him, and he returned to his native town, where he set up schoolmaster. But some, do what they will, plant only to gather weeds: so it proved with Sydney; and he saw his wife, pale, hollow-eyed, and shortly to be a mother, sinking day by day without complaint, without a sigh for his hearing,--but the darkened eye and sunken cheek told him a tale of death. Maddened, he knocked at the door that he had grown beneath, now the dwelling of another; it was opened, and Sydney Thornton stood before Martha Mites. His wife was dying. Sydney Thornton knelt-knelt to Martha Mites, and with tearful eyes sued for her aid; it was refused, and he was told to do as she had done; "but he was a spendthrift, and wasted where he might make; and now waste on, but not with hers?" Passion sub. dued his grief, as rising from the ground he seized her by the arms, taxed her with the evils she had wrought on him and his, and lashed by his feeling of desolation, and the knowledge, that through her he had been disinherited, his anger might have hurried him to a deed of violence, when the door of the apartment opened, and the same little man Martha had seen leaving the house on the day of Adam's death entered the room: Sydney threw her from him, and sank upon a seat! The little man entered the room, and again his eyes and Martha's met. There was a feeling of dislike between them, as instinctive as between a dog and cat. There was a pause of a few minutes, during which Sydney sat with his hands clenched upon his brow, and his breast heaving. Martha fidgeted about the room, and the little man in black said nothing; but his eyes, small, black, and piercing, watched Martha, as a snake watches the thing it darts at. Sydney rose to depart. "Sydney Thornton," said he of the black suit, in a voice that all-wise Nature had proportioned to his size,-"Sydney Thornton, if you are he, stay where you are." Then turning, with sudden recollection, to Martha, added, " with this good lady's permission." "Neither he nor you!" was her courteous reply. 66 My house is no highway for beggars to swarm in; you'll get nothing here, I can tell you." "No matter: we must to business first, and fatten after." "A little," was the patient reply; you are, or I mistake, the heir of Adam Thornton ?" 66 "And this is my house, and the sooner you prate out of it the better," added Martha. "I always speak within doors;" said the little man, sitting down up. on a stool. Martha had the will, but lacked the strength; or the poor little fellow would have been thrown from the window. Quietly turning to Sydney, he resumed," And you were disinherited?" "Ay," cried Sydney; "and, with a dying wife, I now want bread to give her!" "Bread is but a poor comfort to a weakly stomach; will you not give him something better?" said he in black, looking like a note of interrogation at Martha Mites. "A stick to beat you hence!" 66 Nay. Sticks are for the master's hand to beat intruders; have you one?" and the small gentleman looked at Sydney. Sydney paused. Martha said nothing, but fidgeted, as though something were at work which she couldn't understand. 66 Yes, you!" said the stranger, laying an emphasis upon the word. "You would be master if you had your father's will." "It's false !" yelled Martha; and she hurried to the old table, from the false bottom of which she drew out Adam's will, and cried, "Look at this!" "And look at this !"-the little man took a parchment from his coat, and, with a laugh, added, "Adain made it an hour before he died, and Sydney Thornton is not disinherited !" Martha spoke not, but gasped as for a last breath: a moment, and she darted at him with the spring of a wild cat; and, but for the timely prevention of Sydney, we fear the little man would have been cut short in his days, for the knuckles of Martha fastened at his throat. She was forced back, and Sydney read himself the heir to his father's wealth! Adam had repented in his last moments, and, when Martha was absent, made another will, by which his son inherited his all. The careful little Mr. Drip was summoned to his bedside, and Adam signed the parchment but a few minutes before he died. The little man had kept it a secret from a whim; and, seeing Sydney enter the house, followed him. Here, then, was the meaning of Adam's last look; Martha cursed him as she remembered it :-yes! it had a meaning. Would that our pen might cease its labor without recording the heart-stricken grief of Sydney Thornton, who, on his return to his poor dwelling, so lately without pence, now the heir of thousands, found his wife dead! For months afterwards he might be seen wandering as a shade by the grave of his buried wife. He lived in solitude, and from the haunts of men; and Sydney Thornton died a misanthrope. For days after the discovery of another will, Martha was possessed as by a fiend; she raved, stormed, howled, and Adam, lucky Adam, was in his coffin, happy in a peaceful death. But as death comes to all, so came it to Martha Mites, and in a pigeon-pie. The house no longer hers, Martha lived in a garret, and bitter was the pang with which she paid her rent-a trifle, but to her the wealth of worlds! One day a parcel, directed to "Miss Mites," was brought to her; and as the carriage was paid, Martha took it in, and there discovered a pigeon-pie! The milk and honey of our forefathers was nothing to this, and Martha gloated upon it with her eyes, as in it she saw a month's provision; for Martha was no glutton, and well she was not, for, after a very sparing dinner, she was seized with sickness, violent and painful! Hearing her groans, the people of the house sent for a doctor, who gave her an emetic, and discovered, to the horror of all present, that the pigeon-pie was seasoned-not with salt, but arsenic! Now, had Martha been a feeder of any pretensions, her death had followed her meal; but she ate so little that it only made her sick, and in a few days, though weak, she was sufficiently recovered to hunger after food. The doctor had said that the season. ing of the pie was poisoned, but the crust was good? The pie was taken from its dark corner-cupboard, and Martha looked upon it as a friend; with careful fingers she removed all taint of seasoning, and with eager hand ate the crust: and such a crust! the like had never passed the lips of mortal! Hunger, that sweetener of fat bacon, was gnawing her, and she smacked her lips, and blessed the Providence that had led her to think of the crust! In a short time she was seized with pain, and sickness, all the symptoms of poison; she grew livid with the pangs of death, and an hour after Martha was a corpse! It was the crust that had been poisoned, and not the seasoning. H. HOLI.. FAMILY STORIES.-No. IX. THE NURSE'S STORY. BY THOMAS INGOLDSBY. THE HAND OF GLORY. "Malefica quædam auguriatrix in Angliâ fuit, quam demones horibiliter extraxerunt, et imponentes super equum terribilem, per aera rapuerunt. Clamoresque terribiles (ut ferunt) per quatuor fermè miliaria audiebantur." On the lone bleak moor, The Murderers stand Is seen through the storm, And the Thunder growls, And the Lightning is broad and bright; It's very bad weather, And an unpleasant sort of a Night. "Now mount who list, And close by the wrist Sever me quickly the Dead Man's fist!— Now climb who dare Where he swings in air, Nuremb. Chron. And pluck me five locks of the Dead Man's hair!" There's an Old Woman dwells upon Tappington Moor, Her nose it is hook'd, A shocking bad hat, Extinguisher-shaped, the brim narrow and flat: Then, My Gracious! her beard!—it would sadly perplex Nor, I'll venture to say, without scrutiny could he And now before That Old Woman's door, |