"I was well-nigh driven to part with something else," observed her husband. "Many and many's the time that I thought of my silver watch as the one thing that I could turn into money; but I al'ays shrank back from doing that, I counted it would be a'most like trampling over my mother's grave. One day I was pretty near desperate; there was the rent unpaid, and the little uns crying, and I started off for the town where the pawnbroker lived. When I came nigh the place, in sight of the three gilt balls, I pulled out my watch, it seemed to throb like a living thing in my hand. I stood stock still and looked on it, and all the deathbed scene came back upon me as fresh as if I had just left it, the pale face—the wistful eyes—the faint whisper, 'Keep it for my sake.' "I turned back, Mat, I couldn't go on; I had had my long trudge for my pains; thinks I, it's rather starve outright I will, than break the last command of my mother." The voice of Michael sounded husky, and Martha raised her apron to her eyes. "And better times came," observed Mat. "Ay, lad, better times came," said Michael; "but I've not finished the story of my watch. It was about seventeen years ago, the very winter when ye was born, lad, and a sharper winter never I knew. I was coming home one evening, a cutting wind was a-blowing, which seemed to pierce to the very marrow. The stream was quite frozen over, I thought it was hard enough to bear me, and to save going round by the bridge, I tried to cross on the ice. The first step I took there was a crack. The next—the ice gave way, and down I splashed into the water." "The stream ain't very deep," observed Mat. "Quite deep enough, lad, to make a plunge into it on a bitter cold evening no pleasuring matter," said Michael. "I was any way up to my arm-pits, and a bit cut by the ice besides. I scrambled out with a little trouble, shivering and wet, my teeth chattering with cold, and my hands a-bleeding with the ice. But the first thing as I thought on was my watch, I clapped my hand to the little pocket which your Granny had made in my jacket on purpose to hold it; the pocket was empty, the watch had slipped out into the stream in the struggle and scramble." "It warn't likely to be worth much after being in the water," said Mat.