"We were sorry to hear Amos was ill with rheumatism, and now we hear that he is obliged to give up being postman. We have often wished to share our happiness with you two old friends, and as soon as we heard your cottage was for sale we commissioned an agent to buy the freehold for you, and we ask you both to accept it as our Christmas gift. With all our hearts we wish you a happy Christmas." Joanna fell down on her knees, and bowed her grey head upon her hands. "Lord, forgive me! Lord, forgive me!" she sobbed. A positive pang of gladness ran through her; it was like a rush of life poured into dying veins. All the anguish and forlornness, all the dread and foreboding were gone. The old home, dearer to her than ever, was hers again, and by no uncertain tenure. Not only hers, but Charlotte's, if she should outlive her. There was no danger now that Charlotte would ever be homeless. When she lifted herself up and looked at her two beloved ones, Charlotte's pale face had a tinge of colour, and Amos was looking almost frightened at his fortune. "Amos!" cried Joanna. "We must go and look at it this minute!" They stood together, the old man and woman, at the garden gate, gazing down on the paradise they had almost lost. It looked more lovely, more desirable, more home-like than it had ever done, and now it was their own. It seemed almost as if God had sent them the gift direct from heaven. "If it hadn't been for that tramp's child,"' said Amos slowly, "I shouldn't ha' missed the mail that evenin'. And if I hadn't missed the mail, the young Squire 'ud never have thought o' buyin' the house for us. I've often and often wondered about that tramp's child; but there now! 'Ye are of more value than many sparrows.'" "Ay! That's true," said Joanna, with a sob of happiness. A MAN OF HIS WORD CHAPTER I His Only Child IF you take a railway map of England and Wales, you will see that, in spite of its close network of railroads, meeting and crossing in all directions, there are still many tracts of country where the villages must be several miles from any station. In these out-of-the-way spots life is more at a standstill now than even in the days when stage-coaches and wagons were wont to run from town to town, taking the villages in their route, and carrying with them the common gossip of a whole neighbourhood. Twenty-five or thirty years ago, before the railway system was as fully developed as it is at present, but when it had already given a death-blow to the old coaching business, many a village was cut off thus from its former intercourse with the outer world, and left to live apart from the common life of the nation, or to find its own way to a reunion.