"Why, sir, the way was this," answered the pedlar; "I had it from the game-keeper who was with him when it all happened, and he's an honest fellow, so I'm sure the story's true:--Mr. Payne, the gentleman who lives up there, was coming home from shooting, one day last October--he's very fond of shooting; and as he was crossing this bit of the common about the time of sunset, with his two keepers, he saw this hut, and looked up at it. I must tell you, it was raining as hard as it could pour, and blowing fit to freeze one. So he said to the head keeper, 'I suppose nobody lives in that place?' 'I beg your pardon, sir,' said the keeper, 'but there does;' and then he told him all about it. There was a poor lad who had lived in the parish a good many years--an orphan--and as he had neither father nor mother to look after him, he had been badly enough brought up: that was Billy Small's first misfortune. The people pitied him a little, and some of the farmers gave him a bit of work to do, from time to time. But Bill was idle, and Bill was wild; and he got turned off here, and he got turned off there, and in the end everybody abused him, and would have nothing to do with him. Well, to make matters worse, when he was half starved himself, he must needs have some one to starve with him, and so he married a poor girl who had worked in the same fields with him; and you may guess what a to do there was in the parish. I believe they'd have hanged him for it, if they could but have proved that marriage was felony. He tried to get work, and his wife tried; but no one would have anything to say to him, though he promised hard to do better. They all said he was lazy and idle--which was true enough; and they said his wife was as bad, which might be true too, for aught I know; but, however, the two poor things went from bad to worse, till they took refuge in that hovel we passed just now. The boy said he would not go into 'the house,' to be separated from his wife; and there they lived--or, I should rather say, there they were dying--when Mr. Payne passed. The keeper told him how terribly they were off, and that they were both ill of pure starvation and want of covering. Well, the gentleman said he would go in and see with his own eyes; and he found them--the boy, and the girl, and their baby--all crouched up together on some straw, with nothing on earth to cover them during the night but the rags they had on during the day. As half the thatch was off, the rain was pouring in at the other end of the hut, and the wind blowing through at all quarters. The lad had just had a fit of some kind, brought on, the doctor afterwards said, by privation; and the girl was bathed in tears, thinking he was going to die. Well, Mr. Payne is not a bad-hearted man, as gentlemen go, and he was very sorry to see them in such a state; he had some sandwiches in his pocket, and some sherry-and-water in a bottle, and that made them the best meal they had had for many a day.