Food and clothes, and a dry, comfortable room, and wine and proper things for Jake--of which he could not swallow much. The woman was not to go out to work again while he lasted, but to stay at home and attend to him. "I shall be at liberty by the hop-picking time," she said, with a sigh. Ah, poor creature! long before that. When Tod and I went in later in the afternoon, she had just given Jake some physic, ordered by Mr. Carden. She and the boy sat by the fire, tea and bread-and-butter on the deal table between them. Jake lay in bed, his head raised on account of his breathing, I thought he was better; but his thin white face, with the dark, earnest, glistening eyes, was almost painful to look upon. "The reading-gentleman have been in," cried the woman suddenly. "He's coming again, he says, the night or the morning." Tod looked puzzled, and Jake explained. A good young clergyman, who had found him out a day or two before, had been in each day since with his Bible, to read and pray. "God bless him!" said Jake. "Why did you go away so suddenly?" Tod asked, alluding to the hasty departure from Cookhill. "My father was intending to do something for you." "I didn't know that, sir. Many thanks all the same. I'd like to thank _you_ too, sir," he went on, after a fit of coughing. "I've wanted to thank you ever since. When you gave me your arm up the lane, and said them pleasant things to me about having a little child in heaven, you knew she was gone." "Yes." "It broke the trouble to me, sir. My wife heard me coughing afar off, and came out o' the tent. She didn't say at first what there was in the tent, but began telling how you had been there. It made me know what had happened; and when she set on a-grieving, I told her not to: Carry was gone up to be an angel in heaven." Tod touched the hand he put out, not speaking. "She's waiting for me, sir," he continued, in a fainter voice. "I'm as sure of it as if I saw her. The little girl I found and carried to the great house has rich friends and a fine home to shelter her; mine had none, and so it was for the best that she should go. God has been very good to me. Instead of letting me fret after her, or murmur at lying helpless like this, He only gives me peace." "That man must have had a good mother," cried out Tod, as we went away down the entry. And I looked up at him, he spoke so queerly. "Do you think he will get better, Tod? He does not seem as bad as he did last night." "Get better!" retorted Tod. "You'll always be a muff, Johnny. Why, every breath he takes threatens to be his last. He is miles worse than he was when we found him. This is Thursday: I don't believe he can last out longer than the week; and I think Mr. Carden knows it." He did not last so long. On the Saturday morning, just as we were going to start for home, the wife came to the Star with the news. Jake had died at ten the previous night.