"In the course of time, Widow Amos became frail and sand-blind. She was unable to work for herself, and the charity she had shown to others no one seemed disposed to extend to her. Her only child, Jeanie Amos, was obliged to leave her service, and come home to the house of poverty, to guard her mother's grey hairs from accident, and to divide with her the little she could make at the trade of mangling; for, with the money that Charlie Cheeper had sent, before leaving the country, the old woman had bought a calender, and let it out to the neighbours at so much an hour; honest poverty having many shifts. "Matters had gone on in this way for two or three fitful years; and Jeanie, who, when she had come home from service, was a buxom and blooming lass, although yet but a wee advanced in her thirties, began to show, like all earthly things, that she was wearing past her best. Some said that she had lost hopes of Charlie's return; and others, that, come hame when he liked, he would never look over his left shoulder after her. "Well, sir, as fact as death, I mind mysell, when a laddie, of the rumpus the thing made in the town. One Saturday night, a whole washing of old Mrs Pernickity's that had been sent to be calendered, vanished like lightning, no one knew where: the old lady was neither to hold nor bind: and nothing would serve her, but having both the old woman and her daughter committed to the Tolbooth. So to the Tolbooth they went, weeping and wailing; followed by a crowd, who cried loudly out at the sin and iniquity of the proceeding; because the honesty of the prisoners, although impeached, was unimpeachable; the mob were furious; and before the Sunday sun arose old Mrs Pernickity awakened with a sore throat, every pane of her windows having been miraculously broken during the dead hours. [Picture: Country lassies bleaching their snow-white linen] "The mother and the daughter were kept in custody until the Monday; when, as they were standing making a declaration of their innocence before the justices, who should come in but Francie Deep, the Sheriff-officer, with an Irish vagrant and his wife--two tinklers who were lodging in the Back-row, and in whose possession the bundle was found bodily, basket and all. Such a cheering as the folk set up! it did all honest folk's hearts good to hear it. Mrs Pernickity and her lass, to save their bacon, were obliged to be let out by a back door; and, as the justices were about to discharge the two prisoners, who had been so unjustly and injuriously suspected, a stranger forced his way to the middle of the floor, and took the old woman in his arms!" "Charlie Cheeper returned, for a gold guinea," said I.