“What do I see?” he cried.  “Silent, unroofed, and desolate!  That was the very school where I was boarded when you were at South Hill; ’tis but a twelve-month since I saw it standing and its benches filled with cherubs.  That opposite side of the road was the green on which they sported; see, it is now ploughed up!”

Just then a woman passed them on the road, who, in reply to Harley, told them the squire had pulled the school-house down because it stood in the way of his prospects.

“If you want anything with the school-mistress, sir,” said the woman.  “I can show you the way to her house.”

They followed her to the door of a snug habitation, where sat an elderly woman with a boy and a girl before her, each of whom held a supper of bread and milk in their hands.

“They are poor orphans,” the school-mistress said, when Harley addressed her, “put under my care by the parish, and more promising children I never saw.  Their father, sir, was a farmer here in the neighbourhood, and a sober, industrious man he was; but nobody can help misfortunes.  What with bad crops and bad debts, his affairs went to wreck, and both he and his wife died of broken hearts.  And a sweet couple they were, sir.  There was not a properer man to look on in the county than John Edwards, and so, indeed, were all the Edwardses of South Hill.”

“Edwards!  South Hill!” said the old soldier, in a languid voice, and fell back in the arms of the astonished Harley.

He soon recovered, and folding his orphan grandchildren in his arms, cried, “My poor Jack, art thou gone—­”

“My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve them.  It will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.”

“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy.  “Father, when he was a-dying, bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send him to support us.  I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart.  She can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig.  We shall not starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.”

The little girl cried afresh.  Harley kissed off her tears, and wept between every kiss.

V.—­The Man of Feeling is Jealous

Shortly after Harley’s return home his servant Peter came into his room one morning with a piece of news on his tongue.

“The morning is main cold, sir,” began Peter.

“Is it?” said Harley.

“Yes, sir.  I have been as far as Tom Dowson’s to fetch some barberries.  There was a rare junketting at Tom’s last night among Sir Harry Benson’s servants.  And I hear as how Sir Harry is going to be married to Miss Walton.  Tom’s wife told it me, and, to be sure, the servants told her; but, of course, it mayn’t be true, for all that.”

“Have done with your idle information,” said Harley.  “Is my aunt come down into the parlour to breakfast?”