fetch a surgeon, while I scampered home and brought on my back this bit of a hammock, which is, indeed, my own bed; and put Giles upon it; we then lifted him up, bed and all, as tenderly as if he had been a gentleman, and brought him in here. My wife has just brought him a drop of nice broth; and now, sir, as I have done what I could for his poor perishing body, it was I who took the liberty to send to you to come to try to help his poor soul, for the doctor says he can't live."

Mr. Wilson could not help saying to himself,

Such an action as this is worth a whole volume of comments on that precept of our blessed Master, Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you." Giles's dying groans confirmed the sad account Weston had just given. The poor wretch could neither pray himself nor attend to the minister. He could only cry out, "Oh! sir, what will become of me? I don't know how to repent. Oh, my poor wicked children! Sir, I have bred them all up in sin and ignorance. Have mercy on them, sir; let me not meet them in the place of torment to which I am going. Lord grant them that time for repentance which I have thrown away!" He languished a few days, and died in great misery: a fresh and sad instance that people who abuse the grace of God and resist his Spirit find it difficult to repent when they will.

Except the minister and Jack Weston, no one came to see poor Giles, besides Tommy Price, who had been so sadly wronged by him. Tom

often brought him his own rice-milk or appledumpling; and Giles, ignorant and depraved as he was, often cried out, "That he thought now there must be some truth in religion, since it taught even a boy to deny himself and to forgive an injury." Mr. Wilson, the next Sunday, made a moving discourse on the danger of what are called petty offences. This, together with the awful death of Giles, produced such an effect that no poacher has been able to show his head in that parish ever since.

148

TAWNEY RACHEL;

OR,

THE FORTUNE-TELLER:

WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF

DREAMS, OMENS, AND CONJURORS.

TAWNEY RACHEL was the wife of poaching Giles. There seemed to be a conspiracy in Giles's whole family to maintain themselves by tricks and pilfering. Regular labour and honest industry did not suit their idle habits. They had a sort of genius at finding out every unlawful means to support a vagabond life. Rachel travelled the country with a basket on her arm. She pretended to get her bread by selling laces, cabbage-nets, ballads, and history books, and used to buy old rags and rabbit-skins. Many honest people trade in these things, and I am sure I do not mean to say a word against honest people, let them trade in what they will. But Rachel only made this traffic a pretence for getting admittance into farmers' kitchens, in order to tell fortunes.

She was continually practising on the credulity of silly girls; and took advantage of their ignorance to cheat and deceive them. Many an innocent servant has she caused to be suspected of a

robbery, while she herself, perhaps, was in league with the thief. Many a harmless maid has she brought to ruin by first contriving plots and events herself, and then pretending to foretell them. She had not, to be sure, the power of really foretelling things, because she had no power of seeing into futurity; but she had the art sometimes to bring them about according as she had foretold them. So she got that credit for her wisdom which really belonged to her wickedness.

Rachel was also a famous interpreter of dreams, and could distinguish exactly between the fate of any two persons who happened to have a mole on the right or the left cheek. She had a cunning way of getting herself off when any of her prophecies failed. When she explained a dream according to the natural appearance of things, and it did not come to pass, then she would get out of that scrape by saying, that this sort of dreams went by contraries. Now of two very opposite things the chance always is that one of them may turn out to be true; so in either case she kept up the cheat.

Rachel, in one of her rambles, stopped at the house of Farmer Jenkins. She contrived to call when she knew the master of the house was from home, which, indeed, was her usual way. She knocked at the door; the maids being in the field hay-making, Mrs. Jenkins went to open it herself. Rachel asked her if she would please to let her light her pipe? This was a common pretence, when she could find no other way of getting into

a house. While she was filling her pipe, she looked at Mrs. Jenkins, and said, she could tell her some good fortune. The farmer's wife, who was a very inoffensive, but a weak and superstitious woman, was curious to know what she meant. Rachel then looked about very carefully, and shutting the door with a mysterious air, asked her if she was sure nobody would hear them. This appearance of mystery was at once delightful and terrifying to Mrs. Jenkins, who, with trembling agitation, bid the cunning woman speak out. "Then," said Rachel in a solemn whisper, "there is to my certain knowledge a pot of money hid under one of the stones in cellar." your "Indeed!" said Mrs. Jenkins, "it is impossible; for now I think of it, I dreamt last night I was in prison for debt." -"Did you really?" said Rachel; "that is quite surprising. Did you dream this before twelve o'clock or after?" "O it was this morning, just before I awoke." "Then I am sure it is true, for morning dreams always go by contraries," cried Rachel. "How lucky it was you dreamt it so late!"- Mrs. Jenkins could hardly contain her joy, and asked how the money was to be come at. "There is but one way," said Rachel: "I must go into the cellar. I know by my art under which stone it lies, but I must not tell." Then they both went down into the cellar, but Rachel refused to point at the stone unless Mrs. Jenkins would put five pieces of gold into a a basin and do as she directed. The simple woman, instead of turning her out of doors for a