The closing years of Thomas Wanless's life were years of peace. His strength never came back to him after his daughter's death. Indeed, all the summer that followed it he was beaten down by his old complaint rheumatism, but there was no dread of the workhouse and the pauper's grave upon him now. His boy, Thomas the younger, was prospering in the New World, where landlordism had not yet grown a curse, and insisted on sharing his modest wealth with his parents. Had the old man been well he would probably have sturdily refused this help, but as things were he bowed his head and took what God had given, thankful to his son, thankful to Heaven, and rejoicing above all things that his boy--his three children that remained--were delivered from the life that he himself had led. But what would his end have been save for this assistance? Assuredly a pauper's. Nothing could have saved him from that fate. The doom of the labourer is written. It is part of the recognised glory of the English constitution that he shall die in misery as he lives; that if he becomes disabled, his shall be the pauper's dole. The prosperity of young Thomas rendered Thomas and his wife less reluctant to let their other children go to Australia. They clung to them, of course, and would have fain kept them, as it were, within sight. Old Mrs. Wanless was heart-broken at the thought of losing Jane, but she bore her sorrow and made no complaint, when her husband, his own heart torn with grief, said--"Let the lass go. There is hope for her and her husband yonder. Here there is none." Jane therefore married her young gardener in the autumn of the year of Sarah's death, and went away to join young Thomas in Victoria. And the soldier-boy, Jacob, went with them. His time of soldiering was not ended, but his brother Thomas bought him off, and assisted them all to go to the new country. Jacob was the labourer's prodigal son, and was loved accordingly. While he soldiered his parents hardly ever saw him, but he spent a couple of weeks at home before setting sail for Australia; and then the strength of his nature, its likeness to that of his father, and the trials he had endured, brought the old man and him very near to each other. Thus the wrench of parting was keenest for old Thomas in his case, because the joy had been but a flash of light in a dark existence. "I will never see your face again," the old man said to his children the last Sunday evening they passed together. "To your mother and me this parting will be bitterer than death, because you will live, and we will never hear your voices nor see you more in this world." "Oh, father, do not say that," sobbed Jane; "you and mother will come out to Australia to us, and we'll all live together and be so happy."