and, as I know the story to be no allegory, nor child of the brain, but a fact, I shall relate it to you. “In a town,” said she, “not many miles south of the Border, there dwelt a man who was by trade a mechanic, and who was the father of seven children. For sixteen years he had never wanted employment (when he chose to work), and his earnings averaged from five-and-thirty shillings to two pounds a-week. But, with a number of associates, he was in the habit of attending, daily and nightly, what they termed their house of call. In the morning, as he went to his labour, he could not pass it without having what he called his ‘_nipper_,’ or what some of the good people in Scotland call their ‘_morning_,’ which, being interpreted, meaneth a glass of gin, rum, or whisky.” (For gentle as Hannah was, there was a sprinkling of the wag in her character.) “At mid-day,” she added, “he had to give it another call; and to pass it on returning from his work at night was out of the question. Sometimes, and not unfrequently, when he called in for his ‘nipper’ in the morning, he sat down—in a room which had two windows, looking east and west--and forgot to rise until, after he had seen from the one window the sun rising, he beheld it set from the other. But it was the force of habit—it had grown in upon him, as he said; and what could the poor man do? He beheld his wife broken-hearted, going almost in rags, and their affection had changed into bickerings and reproaches. His children, too, were half-starved, ill-clad, and unschooled; and for what education they got, he thought not of paying the schoolmaster—he felt nothing in hand for his money, and therefore could not see the force of the debt. But the poor man could not help it. It was true he earned about two pounds a-week, but which way the money went he could not tell. He did not, as he thought, deserve the reproaches of his wife. His ‘morning’ was only fourpence, his call at mid-day the same, and his evening pipe and glass a shilling or eighteenpence—that, he thought, was nothing, for a man working so hard as he did; and when he did take a day now and then, he said that was not worth reckoning, for his clay could not keep together without moisture; and as for the glass or two which he took on a Sunday, why, they were not worth mentioning. Thus he could see no cause for the unhappiness of his wife, the poverty of his house, and the half-nakedness of his family. He had to ‘do as other people did, or he might leave their society;’ and he attributed all to bad management somewhere, but not on his part. But one Sunday morning he had lingered in their house of call longer than his companions, and he was sitting there when the churchwardens and parish-officers went their rounds, and came to the house. To conceal him from them there, and avoid the penalty—