It was a bright, frosty morning, and, after a walk of twelve miles, I came in sight of the little brick cottage of the nailer by the wayside.  I approached it with mingled emotions of solicitude.  Perhaps it had been vacated by the poor man and his family, and some other nailer had taken his place.  Perhaps the hand that spares neither rich nor poor had been there, and I should miss the boy at the anvil.  I stopped once or twice to listen.  The windows were open, but all was still.  There was no clicking of hammers, nor blowing of bellows, to indicate that the nailer family were still its occupants.  I began to fear that they were gone, and my imagination ran rapidly over a hundred casualties and changes which might have come upon them.  The same gate was open that invited me to enter last summer; and as I passed through it, I met a woman who said the nailer was at dinner in the family apartment of the building.  She went in before me, and the next moment I was in the midst of the circle of my old acquaintance, who had just risen from the table and were sitting around the fire.  My sudden appearance in their midst seemed to cause as much pleasure as surprise.  The father arose and welcomed me with the heartfelt expressions of good-will.  Little Josiah, the hero of my story, came forward timidly with a sunny token of recognition brightening up his black, sharp eyes.  The mother, a tidy, interesting looking woman in a clean, white cap, added her welcome; and I sat down with them, with Josiah standing between my knees, and told them my story—­how some children in America had interested themselves in their boy—­how they had thought of him on their way to school, and talked of him on their way home, and in the parlor, and the kitchen and the cottage;—­how they had contributed their pennies, which they had saved or earned, to send Josiah to school to learn to read the Testament; and how I had come to bring them, and to ask if the boy could be spared from the anvil.  I glanced around upon the group of children, whose eager eyes indicated that they partially comprehended my errand, and then at a couple of sides of bacon suspended over my head.  The nailer’s eyes followed my own, and as they reciprocally rested on the bacon, he commenced his reply from that end of the subject.  He said it was true that many were worse off than he, and many were the comforts he had, that thousands of the poor knew nothing of.  Here he glanced affectionately at his children; but my eyes brought him back to the bacon, and so he went on, apparently under a new impression of his resources of comfort.  He said he had to sell some of his goods to buy the pig when very small, and had “luggled” along with some difficulty to feed and fatten him into a respectable size.  Yes, he was a pretty clever pig; nor was that all—­the nailing business had become better, by a half-penny a thousand, than when I was with them in the summer; and Josiah could now earn ninepence a day.  He wanted to send