But I could not help feeling keenly the contrast when I went from his warm, comfortable, well-defended chamber, in which every appliance that could alleviate suffering or aid recovery was at hand, like a castle well appointed with arms and engines against the inroads of winter and his yet colder ally Death,—when, I say, I went from his chamber to the cottage of the Tomkinses, and found it, as it were, lying open and bare to the enemy. What holes and cracks there were about the door, through which the fierce wind rushed at once into the room to attack the aged feet and hands and throats! There were no defences of threefold draperies, and no soft carpet on the brick floor,—only a small rug which my sister had carried them laid down before a weak-eyed little fire, that seemed to despair of making anything of it against the huge cold that beleaguered and invaded the place. True, we had had the little cottage patched up. The two Thomas Weirs had been at work upon it for a whole day and a half in the first of the cold weather this winter; but it was like putting the new cloth on the old garment, for fresh places had broken out, and although Mrs Tomkins had fought the cold well with what rags she could spare, and an old knife, yet such razor-edged winds are hard to keep out, and here she was now, lying in bed, and breathing hard, like the sore-pressed garrison which had retreated to its last defence, the keep of the castle. Poor old Tomkins sat shivering over the little fire. “Come, come, Tomkins! this won’t do,” I said, as I caught up a broken shovel that would have let a lump as big as one’s fist through a hole in the middle of it. “Why don’t you burn your coals in weather like this? Where do you keep them?” It made my heart ache to see the little heap in a box hardly bigger than the chest of tea my sister brought from London with her. I threw half of it on the fire at once. “Deary me, Mr Walton! you ARE wasteful, sir. The Lord never sent His good coals to be used that way.” “He did though, Tomkins,” I answered. “And He’ll send you a little more this evening, after I get home. Keep yourself warm, man. This world’s cold in winter, you know.” “Indeed, sir, I know that. And I’m like to know it worse afore long. She’s going,” he said, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb towards the bed where his wife lay. I went to her. I had seen her several times within the last few weeks, but had observed nothing to make me consider her seriously ill. I now saw at a glance that Tomkins was right. She had not long to live. “I am sorry to see you suffering so much, Mrs Tomkins,” I said. “I don’t suffer so wery much, sir; though to be sure it be hard to get the breath into my body, sir. And I do feel cold-like, sir.” “I’m going home directly, and I’ll send you down another blanket. It’s much colder to-day than it was yesterday.”