‘They are rum critters, them actresses,’ said the policeman on recovering his dazed senses, as the train moved off, leaving the local dignitaries rather crestfallen, as they stood on the platform bidding adieux with their hats in their hands, and their uncovered, bald heads glistening in the summer sun. ‘They are indeed, Jenkins,’ said the Mayor, wiping his hot face with his pocket-handkerchief, evidently pleased that the actress had gone and relieved the town of one juvenile difficulty. ‘At any rate, to whom does this boy belong?’ ‘Why, to Widow Brown, who is off on the tramp; but I don’t believe it is her boy, after all.’ ‘Very likely not; but we are well rid of the lad and his mother, I think I know her.’ ‘Of course you do. There has been scarcely a Monday all this summer but she has been brought up as drunk and disorderly. I believe she is perfectly incorrigible; and yet she was a tidy, decent sort of woman when she first came to live here,’ said the Town Clerk. ‘She took to drinking when her husband died, and she has been going from bad to worse ever since.’ Ah, when one is low, and wants to forget one’s wickedness, and poverty, and misery, there’s nothing like a drop of drink. It may be rather cowardly to take it, but we are not all heroes; and as long as the drink lasts, you are in a world of sunshine and good fellowship. There is a magic power in drink to make the old young, the sick whole, the poor rich. No wonder the homeless and destitute take to it. Till the people are better lodged and better fed, intemperance must be the curse of Great Britain. CHAPTER III. GOING UP TO TOWN.