"My husband is very bad indeed, ladies; indeed, I thought it was a done job with him last week, and him unconvarted yet. He was very near getting his convarsion last winter; he came in from the public one Saturday night near ten o'clock, and he says to me, 'Anne, it's plain enough thy prayers isn't strong enough for me, and I'm determined to try what they can do for me at Cresbrook Chapel, and we'll set out this very night, to be ready for the meeting in the morning.' So we set out, and as we passed the Nag's Head I could hear him saying, 'Be off with ye,'--that was to the Devil, you know, ladies. It was twelve o'clock when we got to Cresbrook to my mother's; and as soon as morning came my husband said, 'I'll go to cousin Jane, as has axed me so often to go to chapel, and if her axes me again, I'll go.' So he went, but her never axed him, so I took it that the Lord had not appinted this time for Ned, so we come home again, and he soon took to drink worse than ever; but he's better to me than he used to be, for when I knelt down to say my prayers he'd often pull me up again by the roots of my hair. He's coming downstairs now, ladies. Ned, thou must tell these ladies what ails thee, though they'll scarce understand such broad talk as thine, but thou must speak thy best and they'll excuse it." _Ned._ "The doctor says the muscles of my liver is set fast, and he ordered me a hot slivver bath to loosen 'em; so I borrowed one, and while I was in it two or three of the neighbours looked in, and they kept saying, 'Stop in a bit longer, lad, it'll fatch the grease out of thy boones;' so I stopped and stopped till I was well-nigh jead, and I have been going worse ever since." _Miss A._ "Have you been subject to these attacks before?" _Ned._ "Yes, ma'am, since I was a lad. I was 'prentice to my uncle, a stonmason, and one day when I was at the top of a ladder, thirty feet high, me and the big ston I was carrying come down together; and when I laid on the ground half-stunned, the first words my uncle said was, 'The ston's not brocken;' he never axed me if I was hurt, and as soon as I could move, he said, 'Up with it again, lad;' so I went, but afore I was half-way up I fainted right away, and fell to the ground with the ston atop of me that time, and I was in bed eleven weeks. My uncle was a bit of a rogue, but he grew to be quite a big sort of a man afterwards, and used to ax me to dinner, and very handsome victuals he set before me, but I niver felt right in the stomach till I'd said summat about the big ston. However, I niver said much, for I kept thinking to myself, 'The words as one has not yet spooken, one has got yet for to say.'" And, lastly, here is an old Welsh widower: _Miss A._ "I hear that you lost your wife ten years ago. You must have led a sad, lonely life since her death."