"Well, well, poor heart, cheer up!" said the dame, in a tone of sincere condolence:--"remember, that there is One above, who hath said, He will be "a husband to the widow, and a"----but I'll fetch thee and thy pratty bairn a bite o' bread and cheese, and a horn o' mead.--Lord bless me! how white the poor creature is turning! God Almighty save her soul! she's going!" The kind old woman hastened to support the sinking head of the dying stranger, and the child clung, convulsively, to the cold and helpless hand of his mother,--and uttered his wailing agony. All was soon over,--for the poor wanderer died almost instantaneously in Dame Deborah's arm-chair. Reader, if thou hast a heart to love thy mother, I need not attempt to describe to thee how deep was the grief and horror felt by the orphan as he gazed upon his dead mother's face. And if thou hast not such a heart, I will not give thee an occasion to slight a feeling so holy as a child's absorbed love for its loving mother. Suffice it to say, that after three days of almost unmitigated grief, the child, led by Dame Deborah, followed his mother's corpse, sobbing, to the grave; but the aged hand that conducted him to witness the laying of his heart-broken parent in her last resting-place led him back to a comfortable home. The sudden and striking circumstances of his mother's death saddened the orphan's spirits for some time; but he soon recovered the natural gaiety of childhood, notwithstanding his transference from the care of an affectionate and over-indulgent mother, to that of a guardian of advanced age and grave manners. Deborah Thrumpkinson in vain inquired after the orphan's full name. He only knew that he had been called "Joe." She guessed that he must be about four years old; and, fearful that a ceremony which she conceived to be an indispensable preparative for his eternal salvation might have been neglected, she took him to the font of the parish church, and had him baptized "Joseph--in a Christian way," as she termed it: the good dame, herself, becoming surety for the child's fulfilment of the vows thus taken upon himself by proxy. Joe's godmother and protectress taught him to read. And no benefit she conferred upon him in after-life was more thankfully remembered by him than this, her humane and patient initiation of his infantile understanding into the mystery of the alphabet, and the formation of syllables. Here her labour ended, for her science extended little further; but a Bible with the Apocrypha, ornamented with plates,--a valued family possession of the Thrumpkinsons,--was within his reach, and, at any hour of Sunday,--and sometimes on other days of the week when he had washed his hands very clean,--he was privileged with the growing pleasure of turning over the pages of the folio of wonders ever new.