"It's of no good opening up that again," cried Thomas Markham. "What Huskisson did, he did for his country's good, and he never thought it would bring the ill upon us that it did bring. I have told you over and over again of an interview our head governor--who has now been dead these ten years, as you know--had with Huskisson in London. It was on a Sunday evening in summer; and when the governor went in, Huskisson was seated at his library table, with one of the petitions sent up from Westerbury to the House of Commons, spread out before him. It was the one sent up in the May of that year, praying that the ports might be closed again--some of you are old enough to recollect it, my friends--the one in which our sufferings and wrongs were represented in truer and more painful colours than they were, perhaps, in any other of the memorials that went up. It was reported, I remember, that Mr. William Arkell had the chief hand in drawing out that petition: but I don't know how that might have been. Any way, it told on Mr. Huskisson; and the governor said afterwards, that if ever he saw remorse and care seated on a brow, it was on his." "As it had cause to be!" was echoed from all parts of the room. "Mr. Huskisson began speaking at once about the petition," continued the manager. "He asked if the sufferings described in it were not exaggerated; but the governor assured him upon his word of honour, as a resident in Westerbury and an eye-witness, that they were underdrawn rather than the contrary; for that no pen, no description, could adequately describe the misery and distress which had been rife in Westerbury ever since the bill had passed. And he used to say that, live as long as he would, he should never forget the look of perplexity and care that overshadowed Mr. Huskisson's face as he listened to him." "It was repentance pressing sore upon him," growled a deep bass voice. "It's to be hoped our famished and homeless children haunted his dreams." "The next September he met with the accident that killed him," continued Thomas Markham; "and though I know some of us poor sufferers were free in saying it was a judgment upon him, I've always held to my opinion that if he had foreseen the misery the bill wrought, he would never have brought it forward in the House of Commons." "Here's Shepherd a coming in! I wonder how his child is? Last night he thought it was dying. Shepherd, how's the child?" A care-worn, pale man made his way amid the throng. He answered quietly that the child was well. "Well! why, you said last night that it was as bad as it could be, Shepherd! You was going off for the doctor then. Did he come to it?" "One doctor came, from up there," answered Shepherd, pointing to the sky. "He came, and He took the child." The words could not be misunderstood, and the room hushed itself in sympathy. "When did the boy die, Shepherd?" "To-day, at one; and it's a mercy. Death in childhood is better than starvation in manhood."