As soon as they were safely lodged, Mr. Trueman set off in search of poor Jenkins, who was distressed to know what was become of his wife and child; for having heard that they were seen going toward Mr. Fantom's, he despaired of any assistance from that quarter. Mr. Trueman felt no small satisfaction in uniting this poor man to his little family. There was something very moving in this meeting, and in the pious gratitude they expressed for their deliverance. They seemed to forget they had lost their all, in the joy they felt that they had not lost each other. And some disdainful great ones might have smiled to see so much rapture expressed at the safety of a child born to no inheritance but poverty. These are among the feelings with which Providence sometimes overpays the want of wealth. The good people also poured out prayers and blessings on their deliverer, who, not being a philosopher, was no more ashamed of praying with them than he had been of working for them. Mr. Trueman, while assisting at the fire, had heard that Jenkins and his wife were both very honest, and very pious people; so he told them he would not only pay for their new lodgings, but undertook to raise a little subscription among his friends at the Cat and Bagpipes toward rebuilding their cottage; and further engaged that if they would promise to bring up the child in the fear of God, he would stand godfather. This exercise of Christian charity had given such a cheerful flow to Mr. Trueman's spirits, that long before he got home he had lost every trace of ill-humor. "Well, Mr. Fantom," said he gayly, as he opened the door, "now do tell me how you could possibly refuse going to help me to put out the fire at poor Jenkins's?" "Because," said Fantom, "I was engaged, sir, in a far nobler project than putting out a fire in a little thatched cottage. Sir, I was contriving to put out a fire too; a conflagration of a far more dreadful kind--a fire, sir, in the extinction of which universal man is concerned--I was contriving a scheme to extinguish the fires of the Inquisition." "Why, man, they don't blaze that I know of," retorted Trueman. "I own, that of all the abominable engines which the devil ever invented to disgrace religion and plague mankind, that Inquisition was the very worst. But I do not believe popery has ventured at these diabolical tricks since the earthquake at Lisbon, so that a bucket of real water, carried to the real fire at Jenkins's cottage, would have done more good than a wild plan to put out an imaginary flame which no longer burns. And let me tell you, sir, dreadful as that evil was, God can send his judgments on other sins besides superstition; so it behoves us to take heed of the other extreme or we may have our earthquakes too." "The hand of God is not shortened, sir, that it can not destroy, any more than it can not save. In the meantime, I must repeat it; you and I are rather called upon to