The orphan saw his foster-mother no more alive. When, three years afterwards, he again entered that little village of Haxey, it was to attend the interment of Dame Deborah in the same churchyard to which she had conducted him to witness the burial of his mother. And what an altered man was Joe! A residence in the manufacturing districts had unveiled to him a world of misery--contention--competition--avarice--oppression--and suffering--and famine--that he had never supposed to exist! As for his religious opinions they changed, and changed again,--amidst varnished, high-sounding professors of sanctity, on the one hand,--and starving thousands, who in the pangs of despair charged God with the authorship of their wretchedness, on the other. Had Joe been asked, ten years afterwards, what were _now_ his religious sentiments, he would have answered:--"I am wearied with talking about creeds, and I am trying,--by relieving misery as much as I can, and diffusing all the happiness I can,--to show that I believe all men to be my brethren: I think _that_ is the best religion." TOBY LACKPENNY THE PHILOSOPHICAL: A DEVOTEE OF THE MARVELLOUS. Among the most remarkable events which took place in Haxey, towards the close of the last century, was the settlement, in that ancient village, of curious Toby Lackpenny, the philosophical tailor. Toby's coat was usually out at the elbows, but he had long held, throughout the whole Isle of Axholme, a high reputation as a man of deep and singular learning. His "library" was the theme of marvel unceasing to his plain and unsophisticated customers; and though it consisted but of forty or fifty ragged volumes, it constituted a wealth that the philosophical Toby, himself, priced above rubies. To this treasury of wisdom he, nightly, resorted, with ever-fresh delight, as regularly as his manual labour closed; and many an ecstatic hour did he live over his books in the sweet stillness and solitude of early morning. There were tractates on the whole circle of science, in his bibliographical collection, Toby asserted; for, like all other great philosophers, he aspired to be an encyclopedist in knowledge: but, up to the time at which we are commencing this brief record of Toby's history, it was simply, by his mastery of the erudite pages of Nicholas Culpepper,--and of a very ancient volume comprising treatises on Astrology, Geomancy, Palmistry, and other kindred occult studies,--that Toby had won for himself, throughout the length and breadth of Axholmian land, so high a character for wisdom. None could doubt the profundity of Toby's acquirements; for whoever took a wild flower to his door was sure to be told its name,--its healing virtues,--and the names of its presiding influences, the planets and zodiacal constellations,--those celestial potencies from which, he assured the visiter, every herb and flower derived their medicinal virtues.