But in noticing the doings of the second Mrs Kerr, I have overlooked the situation of the children of poor Hannah. I have seen stepmothers who have been as kind to the children entrusted to their care—I have thought even more so—than if they had been their own. But such, the reader will already have imagined, was not the treatment of the children of Hannah Jerdan. Within twelve months from their father’s marriage, they became subjected to daily, almost hourly scenes of cruel, petty, and capricious persecution. But they endured their hard treatment and murmured not. In the society of each other they were happy—they spoke of their mother and wept. To Jacobini she was as a dream-mother—like the “dream-children” of poor matchless ELIA. But Francis remembered his mother; and by that name he could never be brought to call her who had now taken her place. Mrs Kerr, indeed, though she had no children of her own, was wont to say— “Don’t let _the creatures_ call me mother.” Time had passed on until Francis was a boy, or, perhaps, I should say a youth, of nearly fourteen, and Jacobini was approaching twelve. Now, it occurred, that, at the time I refer to, she had offended her stepmother, in what way I know not; but, according to the statement of the latter, it was an every-day offence—although Jacobini was a gentle child, docile as her mother was. But Mrs Kerr was in an evil humour, and, after having caused her favourite serving-maid to beat the child in her presence, not satisfied with the punishment she had received, she began to chastise her herself. The cries of little Jacobini reached the ears of her brother, who was amusing himself in the garden. Although generally a quiet, he was a bold and passionate boy. He rushed towards the house—he burst into the room where his stepmother was gratifying her cruelty and hatred on his helpless sister—he rushed forward. “Woman!” he cried, in the manner of one whose reason has left him, “if you strike my sister, I will strike you!” “Boy!” she exclaimed, in a frenzy; and struck not only his sister again, but him too, and applied epithets to both, which, for the sake of human nature, it is as well not to repeat. I have said that he was bold and passionate—he was also a tall and strong boy for his years. He grasped her more fiercely, and as she continued to vent her rage on both, and to strike at both, he dashed her to the floor, and exclaimed again— “Woman! if you strike my sister, I will strike you!”