Winifred's library was not a large one. There was no Sunday-school library in those times with its weekly supply of story-books—no magazine or illustrated newspaper. Her books were few, and those of a character which I fear would hardly attract many of my young readers. Her favorite volumes were the Bible, the "Book of Martyrs," and an odd volume of Mr. Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene," which her father had bought for her in Bristol. Besides which she read aloud now and then to Mrs. Alwright in Hall's "Chronicle" and Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia." But the very fact that Winifred had access to so few books made her prize more dearly and study more attentively those she had. Over the first of these especially she pondered for hours in the intervals of her daily tasks, strengthening her spirit and feeding her imagination with the glorious truths of the one and the beautiful tales of heroism and virtue in the others. In other circumstances she might have become a mere luxurious dreamer and castle-builder, living in a world of her own fancies, to the neglect of real duties, but no such result was possible under the sensible and energetic training of Dame Magdalen Evans. Ever since Winifred had been able to run alone, she had had a regular round of daily duties laid upon her, for the performance of which she had been held strictly accountable. The chickens must be fed, the eggs collected, the daily task of spinning and knitting duly performed. And the little girl was taught to hallow these daily and commonplace toils by a spirit of religious consecration. Dame Magdalen early made her daughter her assistant in those works of charity and mercy which were the delight of her own heart, and Winifred was at all times a welcome-visitor in the cottages of their poor neighbors, who looked upon her as a kind of saint. She shrank from no toil, however disagreeable, which would benefit others, and she sometimes undertook tasks from which elder people shrank in dismay. It was she who first gained access to Dame Oldmixon, as she sat alone in her darkened cottage, distracted with grief and terror after the horrible death of her husband, and at first by tears and caresses, and then by whispered prayers and verses of Scripture, had quieted the poor creature and persuaded her to take some food and try to sleep. It was she who by long and careful searching had recovered little Willie Higgins' silver sixpence, just as the child had given up the quest in despair, and was going home to the whipping he was pretty certain to receive.