And great friends we became in time. At first I went to the cottage daily to enquire after little Sarah, who progressed favourably under the Warwick surgeon's care; and when she was past all danger and pain, I went to talk with old Thomas. Gradually his heart opened to me; and bit by bit I gathered up the main incidents of his history. A commonplace history enough, yet tragic too; for Thomas was no commonplace man. There was a depth of passion beneath that still hard face; a wealth of feeling, a range of thought that to me was utterly astounding. What had not this village labourer known and suffered; what sorrow; what baffled hope; yea, what despair; and, through despair, what peace! As I sat by his chair on the summer evenings and listened to his talk with his old friends, or walked with him in the by-lanes, gathering from his lips the leading events of his life, my heart often burned within me. Yet, refined reader, gentle reader, Thomas Wanless was only a peasant; a man that sold vegetables and flowers from door to door in little Warwick town to eke out his means of subsistence. His was the toiler's lot; the lot without hope for this world, whose natural end is want, and a pauper's grave. Can I hope to interest you in this man's history? I confess I have my doubts. There is tragedy in it; it is mostly tragedy; but then it is the tragedy of the low born. I shall not be able to introduce you to any arch plotter; to groups of refined adulteresses clad in robes of satin and blazoned with jewels and gold, at once the sign and the fruit of their shame. Nor can I promise to unweave startling plots, or to deal in mysterious horrors such as cause the flesh of dainty ladies to creep with a delicious excitement. No; the incidents of Thomas Wanless's story are mostly those of a plain English villager, doomed to suffer and to bear his share of the load of our national greatness; one above the common level in his personal qualities to be sure, but nowise above the common lot. Those who cannot bear to read of such, had better close the book. Read by you or not, Thomas Wanless's story I must write, for it is a story that all the upper powers of these realms would do well to ponder--from the serene defenders of the faith, with their high satellite, lord bishops in lawn sleeves, downwards. The day is coming, and coming soon, when the men of Thomas Wanless's stamp will invite these dignitaries to give an account of themselves, and to justify the manner of their being under penalty of summary notice to quit. CHAPTER I. WHEREIN IS SET FORTH THE BLESSEDNESS OF A HELOT'S NURTURE.