THE ORPHANS OF MALVERN.

"READ me that beautiful verse again, Mary dear," said Widow Mason to her little girl, who, seated beside her mother's sick-bed, was reading the words of the Book of Life to one who was fast entering into the valley of the shadow of death.

"Leave thy fatherless children, and let thy widows trust in me," repeated Mary, in a tone which, though quiet and low, was perfectly audible in the stillness of the little cottage. The rays of the setting sun streamed in through the small casement, and were reflected from some well-kept pieces of furniture, which shewed like relics of better days, lighting up the lowly but beautifully clean bed on which the poor sufferer lay, and the pallid face and wasted hand which

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almost rivalled in whiteness the cap and sleeve that inclosed them.

"Mary," the dying woman faintly continued, "those blessed words are a comfort indeed to me now, for I múst soon be taken from you, and leave you and James alone in the world; but the Lord, who has been my stay in my widowhood, will be a Father to you as long as you keep his commandments and walk in his ways, which I hope you will always strive to do. I have tried, as far as I was able, to teach you the way in which you should go, and I hope

that when I am laid at rest with those that are gone before, you will not forget your bringing up." Here the poor woman paused, quite exhausted by the exertion of saying so much.

Mary was not surprised to hear her mother speak in this way, though it was the first time she had ever heard her allude to her approaching death, for the neighbours had all told her that Mrs. Mason could never be better. She sat with the tears streaming silently down her cheeks, her eyes fixed on the pale, still countenance before her, and scarcely daring to move or breathe, lest she should disturb the slumber into which she thought her mother had fallen.

In a few minutes, Mrs. Mason again spoke: "Is James gone for Neighbour Lee?"

"Yes, mother, some time since; I expect they will be back directly."

Scarcely were the words uttered, when the cottage door opened, and James, accompanied by the kind old neighbour, who had been Mrs. Mason's friend and nurse during her illness, came in. "Raise me up, Mrs. Lee," said the dying woman faintly, "I feel so oppressed."

Mrs. Lee raised her, and supported her in her arms, but her head fell back, and after a few indistinct sentences, expressive, as far as the listeners could catch them, that she died in the fulness of Christian faith and hope, her spirit returned to God who gave it.

Three days afterwards, her remains were laid to rest by the parish, the furthest corner of the church-yard, surrounding the fine old parish church of Great Malvern, of which place Mrs. Mason had long been a resident. As the lowly procession passed its gateway, a party of newly arrived visiters, consisting of an elderly clergyman, a lady, and a young girl on a donkey, had just left one of the hotels to enjoy the mildness of a fine spring afternoon, and had paused near the church, struck by the beauty of the

scene.

They were persons to whom the sorrows of life in their humblest form were sacred, and they respectfully withdrew to a little distance as the coffin was carried past, and looked with affectionate interest and sympathy on the two little mourners, who, each holding a hand of their kind neighbour Lee, and clothed in such scanty black as their penury permitted, tearfully followed their poor mother to the grave. Dr. and Mrs. Kirby had learned to feel for others, by having been taught themselves in the school of affliction. Dr. Kirby was a clergyman in the north of England, an excellent man, and a devoted minister of the Church of Christ. His wife was in all respects worthy of him, and both of them had passed through the trials with which it had pleased God to prove them, in a manner becoming the disciples of Him who was made perfect through suffering. They had lost an only son, and two beautiful girls, who were successively carried off by consumption as they grew up; and they had now brought their youngest and only surviving child Constance to Malvern, to spend the trying months of spring there, in the hope that its mild and salubrious climate might ward off a threatening of the same fatal complaint.

As the orphans, and the few neighbours and friends, who had assisted in paying the last duties to the departed, returned to the deserted cottage, they perceived three men at some little distance before them, who stopped before its closed door, and knocked loudly. On a nearer approach, they discovered that one of these persons was Judson, the butcher, who owned the cottage. He was a hard, unfeeling man, to whom poor Mrs. Mason had, unfortunately, owing to her long illness, got into considerable arrears of rent; and as her last days had been embittered by his threats of making distress for his money, and turning her out to die in the workhouse, the neighbours justly concluded that now, having heard of her death, he was come to seize the goods, and that the men who were with him were sheriffs' officers.

"He might have waited till the poor creature was cold in her grave," said the warm-hearted Mrs. Lee. "How did he know that the corpse was not lying in the house now? And the children, the poor children, what must become of them?"

As they drew near the cottage, Judson turned, and on observing them come forward, said harshly to Mary,—