"And if," said Aram, pausing, "if I were to say to you,--name your want and it shall be fulfilled, would you have no charity for me also?" "Umph," returned the hag, "ye are the great scolard; and they say ye knows what no one else do. Till me now," and she approached, and familiarly, laid her bony finger on the student's arm; "till me,--have ye iver, among other fine things, known poverty?" "I have, woman!" said Aram, sternly. "Och ye have thin! And did ye not sit and gloat, and eat up your oun heart, an' curse the sun that looked so gay, an' the winged things that played so blithe-like, an' scowl at the rich folk that niver wasted a thought on ye? till me now, your honour, till me!" And the crone curtesied with a mock air of beseeching humility. "I never forgot, even in want, the love due to my fellow-sufferers; for, woman, we all suffer,--the rich and the poor: there are worse pangs than those of want!" "Ye think there be, do ye? that's a comfort, umph! Well, I'll till ye now, I feel a rispict for you, that I don't for the rest on 'em; for your face does not insult me with being cheary like their's yonder; an' I have noted ye walk in the dusk with your eyes down and your arms crossed; an' I have said,--that man I do not hate, somehow, for he has something dark at his heart like me!" "The lot of earth is woe," answered Aram calmly, yet shrinking back from the crone's touch; "judge we charitably, and act we kindly to each other. There--this money is not much, but it will light your hearth and heap your table without toil, for some days at least!" "Thank your honour: an' what think you I'll do with the money?" "What?" "Drink, drink, drink!" cried the hag fiercely; "there's nothing like drink for the poor, for thin we fancy oursels what we wish, and," sinking her voice into a whisper, "I thinks thin that I have my foot on the billies of the rich folks, and my hands twisted about their intrails, and I hear them shriek, and--thin I'm happy!" "Go home!" said Aram, turning away, "and open the Book of life with other thoughts." The little party proceeded, and, looking back, Lester saw the old woman gaze after them, till a turn in the winding valley hid her from his sight. "That is a strange person, Aram; scarcely a favourable specimen of the happy English peasant;" said Lester, smiling. "Yet they say," added Madeline, "that she was not always the same perverse and hateful creature she is now." "Ay," said Aram, "and what then is her history?" "Why," replied Madeline, slightly blushing to find herself made the narrator of a story, "some forty years ago this woman, so gaunt and hideous now, was the beauty of the village. She married an Irish soldier whose regiment passed through Grassdale, and was heard of no more till about ten years back, when she returned to her native place, the discontented, envious, altered being you now see her."