On the evening preceding the day of Joe's freedom, the good old Deborah, sitting at her own door, presented a picture almost identical with the sketch attempted at the opening of this brief recital. Except the deeper furrows on her face, there was no token that age had strengthened its empire over her. The fine old woman sat as erect in her arm-chair as she had sat there sixteen years before. Her eyes also beamed with the same wakefulness and kindliness on her neighbours, as they passed by, from their labour, and tendered her a respectful recognition,--for she was at peace with all, and beloved by all; and while the light vapour curled and wreathed, as it floated slowly upward from her pipe, and then melted, above her head, into the invisibility of space, it seemed a type of the serene and healthful course she had trod in her uprightness, that was, in due time, to receive its quiet change into the unseen but felicitous future. The solicitude she had, for seventeen years, increasingly felt respecting the welfare of her foster-son,--now the youth was within a few hours of being at age,--filled her heart so completely, that she could do nothing as she sat in her customary seat, that evening, but con over the probable consequences of Joe's emancipation from the thraldom of apprenticeship, which was to take place the following noon. "Well, I'm truly thankful," soliloquised the peaceful septuagenarian, puffing away the clouds from her pipe with growing energy, and now and then ending her sentences in an audible tone, through the strength of earnestness,--"that the Lord moved my heart to take care of this poor motherless and faytherless bairn. It's Him, I'm sensible, that inclines us to do any good,--for there's little that's good in us by natur'. I've no reason to repent what I did; for though the dear lad has a few whirligig notions, yet I'm sure there's a vast deal o' good in him. He doesn't like church over well,--but then the parson grows old and stupid, like me; and it's not likely that a young fellow that's grown so very book-larnt as our Joe, should be fond o' spending his time in listening to an old toothless parson's dull drawling. Neighbour Toby Lackpenny says that the lad's ower nat'ral; and not abstrac' enough, in his way o' thinking; but, for my part, I think he's far ower abstrac' already! At least, I hope he'll grow wiser, in a few years, than to say that the dead never appear to the living. He may talk in that way to green geese like himself, but not to me. Didn't I see my own dear Barachiah, for three nights together, stand in the moonlight, at the foot of my bed, while I was weeping sore for the loss of him?--The Lord forgive me, that I should have grieved so sinfully as to have disturbed his rest! But that's past and gone, and many a deep trouble besides, thank Heaven above! And now, here's this lad. I wished, often, that I had one o' my own;--but it was not God's will so to bless my poor