"These are cottages,--some larger, some smaller," was the reply. "Those buildings marked in red are public-houses; those in green are farms. You observe that there is not a church or a school in the place; there is not one nearer than S----." "More's the pity!" said Emmie. "If you count, you will find that there are eighty-seven tenements of various kinds, and the dwellers in them are, of course, all tenants of our father. Give five individuals to each family, and you have four hundred and thirty-five souls on this estate, without a resident clergyman." "And what can bring so many people around us?" asked Emmie. "I believe the dye-works," answered her brother. "They give employment to most of the men who are not farm-labourers, and, as far as I have ascertained, to some of the women also." "Then the people are not very poor," observed Emmie, with a look of relief; for she had been alarmed at the idea of more than four hundred beggars being quartered on her father's estate. "The men in work ought not to be very poor," said Bruce; "but then there are sure to be widows, sick folk, and some too old for work. Besides this, improvidence, ignorance, and vice always bring misery in their train, and, from all that I have heard or seen, the people here are little better than heathens. The children run about like wild creatures; there is no one to teach them their duty to God or to man." "I hope that papa may in time set up a school," said Emmie.--Compulsory education was a thing not yet introduced into England. "I hope that he may; but he cannot do so at present," observed Bruce. "I was talking with him on the subject on our way from church this morning. Our father's expenses in educating Vibert and myself are heavy, and if either or both of us go to college they will be heavier still. Yet for these wretched tenants something should be done, and at once." "Papa intends gradually to repair or rebuild some of the cottages." "I am speaking of the people who inhabit the cottages," interrupted Bruce; "the dirty, ignorant, swearing, lying creatures who are dropping off, year by year, from misery on this side of the grave to worse misery beyond it." Emmie looked distressed and perplexed. "What can be done for them?" she inquired. "We must, in the first place, know them better, and so find out how to help them," said Bruce. "You are aware that I have little time to spare from my studies, which it is my duty to prosecute vigorously. I can give but my Sunday evenings, and my father is quite willing that on them I should hold a night-school for boys in our barn." Emmie looked with smiling admiration on her young brother, about to undertake with characteristic resolution what she regarded as a Herculean task. But no trace of a smile lingered on her lips as Bruce calmly went on,-- "I can thus do something for the boys, but the care of the women and the girls naturally falls upon you." "Upon me!" cried Emmie, looking aghast.