"What! Dame Darkmans!" said Ellinor, quickly. "Ah! let us turn back. I hate to encounter that old woman; there is something so evil and savage in her manner of talk--and look, how she rates that poor girl, whom she has dragged or decoyed to assist her!" Aram looked curiously on the old hag. "Poverty," said he, "makes some humble, but more malignant; is it not want that grafts the devil on this poor woman's nature? Come, let us accost her--I like conferring with distress." "It is hard labour this?" said the Student gently. The old woman looked up askant--the music of the voice that addressed her sounded harsh on her ear. "Ay, ay!" she answered. "You fine gentlefolks can know what the poor suffer; ye talk and ye talk, but ye never assist." "Say not so, Dame," said Lester; "did I not send you but yesterday bread and money? and when do you ever look up at the Hall without obtaining relief?" "But the bread was as dry as a stick," growled the hag: "and the money, what was it? will it last a week? Oh, yes! Ye think as much of your doits and mites, as if ye stripped yourselves of a comfort to give it to us. Did ye have a dish less--a 'tato less, the day ye sent me--your charity I 'spose ye calls it? Och! fie! But the Bible's the poor cretur's comfort." "I am glad to hear you say that, Dame," said the good-natured Lester; "and I forgive every thing else you have said, on account of that one sentence." The old woman dropped the sticks she had just gathered, and glowered at the speaker's benevolent countenance with a malicious meaning in her dark eyes. "An' ye do? Well, I'm glad I please ye there. Och! yes! the Bible's a mighty comfort; for it says as much that the rich man shall not inter the kingdom of Heaven! There's a truth for you, that makes the poor folk's heart chirp like a cricket--ho! ho! I sits by the imbers of a night, and I thinks and thinks as how I shall see you all burning; and ye'll ask me for a drop o' water, and I shall laugh thin from my pleasant seat with the angels. Och--it's a book for the poor that!" The sisters shuddered. "And you think then that with envy, malice, and all uncharitableness at your heart, you are certain of Heaven? For shame! Pluck the mote from your own eye!" "What sinnifies praching? Did not the Blessed Saviour come for the poor? Them as has rags and dry bread here will be ixalted in the nixt world; an' if we poor folk have malice as ye calls it, whose fault's that? What do ye tache us? Eh?--answer me that. Ye keeps all the larning an' all the other fine things to yoursel', and then ye scould, and thritten, and hang us, 'cause we are not as wise as you. Och! there is no jistice in the Lamb, if Heaven is not made for us; and the iverlasting Hell, with its brimstone and fire, and its gnawing an' gnashing of teeth, an' its theirst, an' its torture, and its worm that niver dies, for the like o' you." "Come! come away," said Ellinor, pulling her father's arm.