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only lie down for an hour or two, and let me go on the while?"

"No, Seth, no. Make Mother go to bed, and go thyself."

Meantime Lisbeth had dried her eyes, and now followed Seth, holding
something in her hands. It was the brown-and-yellow platter containing
the baked potatoes with the gravy in them and bits of meat which she had
cut and mixed among them. Those were dear times, when wheaten bread
and fresh meat were delicacies to working people. She set the dish down
rather timidly on the bench by Adam's side and said, "Thee canst pick a
bit while thee't workin'. I'll bring thee another drop o' water."

"Aye, Mother, do," said Adam, kindly; "I'm getting very thirsty."

In half an hour all was quiet; no sound was to be heard in the house but
the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the ringing of Adam's tools.
The night was very still: when Adam opened the door to look out at
twelve o'clock, the only motion seemed to be in the glowing, twinkling
stars; every blade of grass was asleep.

Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the
mercy of our feelings and imagination; and it was so to-night with Adam.
While his muscles were working lustily, his mind seemed as passive as a
spectator at a diorama: scenes of the sad past, and probably sad
future, floating before him and giving place one to the other in swift
succession.

He saw how it would be to-morrow morning, when he had carried the coffin
to Broxton and was at home again, having his breakfast: his father
perhaps would come in ashamed to meet his son's glance--would sit down,
looking older and more tottering than he had done the morning before,
and hang down his head, examining the floor-quarries; while Lisbeth
would ask him how he supposed the coffin had been got ready, that he had
slinked off and left undone--for Lisbeth was always the first to utter
the word of reproach, although she cried at Adam's severity towards his
father.

"So it will go on, worsening and worsening," thought Adam; "there's no
slipping uphill again, and no standing still when once you 've begun
to slip down." And then the day came back to him when he was a little
fellow and used to run by his father's side, proud to be taken out
to work, and prouder still to hear his father boasting to his
fellow-workmen how "the little chap had an uncommon notion o'
carpentering." What a fine active fellow his father was then! When
people asked Adam whose little lad he was, he had a sense of distinction
as he answered, "I'm Thias Bede's lad." He was quite sure everybody
knew Thias Bede--didn't he make the wonderful pigeon-house at Broxton
parsonage? Those were happy days, especially when Seth, who was three
years the younger, began to go out working too, and Adam began to be a
teacher as well as a learner. But then came the days of sadness, when
Adam was someway on in his teens, and Thias began to loiter at the
public-houses, and Lisbeth began to cry at home, and to pour forth her
plaints in the hearing of her sons.

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