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"And I've got a miller's thumb, too;" and he turned up his little thumb for confirmation of the fact. "Thee's not a miller's son," repeated the other, with a grin. "Thee's nobody's child, thee is. Master Lake's not thy vather, nor Mrs. Lake bean't thy mother. Thee was brought to the mill in a sack of grist, thee was." In saying which, the boy repeated a popular version of Jan's history.
The father, whose eyesight was none of the best, pulled out his spectacles, and, having applied them to his nose reconnoitered me over his son's shoulder: but no sooner did he behold me, than he was seized with a fit of shaking, even more violent than Dick's, and, with a broken accent, addressed me thus: "In the name of the Vather, Zun, and Holy Ghost, I charge you, an you been Satan, to be gone to the Red Zen; but an you be a moordered mon, speak, that you may have a Christom burial."
He chuckled and winked. "I du be a turble vunny man," quavered the thin falsetto voice. "They be niver a dune a laughin' along o' my jokes. An' I du remember Zur Timothy's vather zo well as Zur Timothy hisself, though 'ee bin dead nigh sixty year. Lard, 'ee was a bad 'un, was y' ould squire. An old devil. That's what 'ee was."
I am an orphan; my parents I never saw. And tell me for this strange resemblance between us almost overpowers me do yours live?" "Whoy," was the reply, "old Tom Prescot and his woif be alive; and they zay as how they be my vather and moother, and I zuppose they be; but zoom cast up to them that they bean't."
"And I'll tell yü this, Maäster Harry, if yü be after dinner with en, and he has a bottle o' poort wine that he puts on the mantelpiece, and he says to yü to let that aloän, vor 'tis a medicine-zart o' wine, don't yü heed en, but have that wine. 'Tis the real old poort wine, zor, that yür vather gied en the dahmned old pagan!"
"Time was I've zeed vifteen pair o' 'osses go out of this 'ere yard in vour-and-twenty hour; and now there be'ant vifteen, no, not ten, in vour-and-twenty days! There was the duik not this 'un; he be'ant no gude; but this 'un's vather why, when he'd come down the road, the cattle did be a-going, vour days an eend.
But when a sent it home, I thought my vather would have had the law of un. I'm blessed if a hadn't given the mare four white feet, and shoulders that wouldn't have pulled a vegetable cart; and she near- wheeler of the mail! I'd lay a pound bill Jan Lake would a done her ever so much better, for as young a hand as a is, if a'd squinted at her as long."
"Tis old age be the matter wi' yu, vather," said his mate, a young fellow of sixty or so, who lodged with him. "I bain't nigh so yold as zum," said Happy Jack, peevishly. "Tis a nice way vor a man tu be tuke, wi'out a thing the matter wi' un, vor the doctor tu lay yold on." Dr. Blundell soothed him by giving his illness a name. "It's Anno Domini, Jack." "What be that?
Then he bowed his head between his hands as he knelt beside her, for he knew that God had given her back her memory again; and his sobs were the sobs of a thankful heart. "Vather!" she whispered, and with an effort she stretched the hand nearest to him and touched his sleeve. "'Tis all right now I be gwine tu Ben." The dying eyes glowed with love; then with a restful sigh the life passed out.
'But I say, vather, drawled out some one, 'they say there's a sight more money in England now, than there was afore the war-time. 'Eees, booy, said the old man; 'but ITS GOT INTO TOO FEW HANDS. 'Well, thought Lancelot, 'there's a glimpse of practical sense, at least. And a pedlar who sat next him, a bold, black-whiskered bully, from the Potteries, hazarded a joke,
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