the sloping roof, Martin passed the night upon a clean pallet. He could sleep but little: through the open window came the grateful scent of the honeysuckle, and his eyes rested upon the stars. His broken slumbers were full of strange visions, that crowded on and away in such quick succession as to leave no connected impressions. Of some dear familiar face a sudden glimpse was caught, and lost so immediately as to be a grief; and a familiar voice heard soft and melodious, but the straining ear could catch no word; and then music exquisitely faint and plaintive; and then the stern trumpet, and darkness, and a crash, louder than any thunder, and so sleep frighted from the eyes, and a troubled awakening. But towards morning the blessing came:--a drowsiness stole upon him, and with it a delicious sense of fading consciousness. A sleep deep, dreamless, and refreshing, was gently and pleasantly chased from his eyes by the play of the cheerful sunbeams; and through the open casement was poured the varied melody of little birds, that with clear sweet notes were sending up to heaven, with the white incense of the morning dew, their early song. Martin sprang up with a grateful heart, and looked from the window. The mantling honeysuckle did half conceal him. Beneath the shade of an aged mulberry tree, by a cistern of water which flowed over at a rude lip of stone, and ran away to irrigate the plot of ground in which the cottage stood, sat his mother at her spinning-wheel. In a corner of the garden his father and old Peter were digging. This little bit of land, with a small orchard by its side, was the principal, though not the sole, support of his parents. In addition to the produce of his mother’s spinning, her skill in needle-work brought in something; and old Noble had long ago taught himself to make cabbage nets, twist fishing lines, and turn hackle into flies, with little thought that such pastime should one day help him to buy bread. However, so many persons of ingenuity had fallen into poverty in these times, that a far walk might be taken, and a long stand might be made in a dull market-place, or at the corner of an inn yard, before a purchaser for such trifles could be found; indeed a sale for any thing beyond necessaries could not be reckoned on.