mind to be overcast in secret with its own thoughts about this time.  There was a change coming.  Two or three days after I had earned the wages just mentioned my husband found me out.  The furniture-money was all spent.  He made a disturbance at the club, I was only able to quiet him by giving him all the money I could spare from my own necessities.  The scandal was brought before the committee.  They said, if the circumstance occurred again, they should be obliged to part with me.  In a fortnight the circumstance occurred again.  It’s useless to dwell on it.  They all said they were sorry for me.  I lost the place.  My husband went back with me to my lodgings.  The next morning I caught him taking my purse, with the few shillings I had in it, out of my trunk, which he had broken open.  We quarreled.  And he struck me again—­this time knocking me down.

“I went once more to the police court, and told my story—­to another magistrate this time.  My only petition was to have my husband kept away from me.  ‘I don’t want to be a burden on others’ (I says) ’I don’t want to do any thing but what’s right.  I don’t even complain of having been very cruelly used.  All I ask is to be let to earn an honest living.  Will the law protect me in the effort to do that?’

“The answer, in substance, was that the law might protect me, provided I had money to spend in asking some higher court to grant me a separation.  After allowing my husband to rob me openly of the only property I possessed—­namely, my furniture—­the law turned round on me when I called upon it in my distress, and held out its hand to be paid.  I had just three and sixpence left in the world—­and the prospect, if I earned more, of my husband coming (with permission of the law) and taking it away from me.  There was only one chance—­namely, to get time to turn round in, and to escape him again.  I got a month’s freedom from him, by charging him with knocking me down.  The magistrate (happening to be young, and new to his business) sent him to prison, instead of fining him.  This gave me time to get a character from the club, as well as a special testimonial from good Mr. Bapchild.  With the help of these, I obtained a place in a private family—­a place in the country, this time.

“I found myself now in a haven of peace.  I was among worthy kind-hearted people, who felt for my distresses, and treated me most indulgently.  Indeed, through all my troubles, I must say I have found one thing hold good.  In my experience, I have observed that people are oftener quick than not to feel a human compassion for others in distress.  Also, that they mostly see plain enough what’s hard and cruel and unfair on them in the governing of the country which they help to keep going.  But once ask them to get on from sitting down and grumbling about it, to rising up and setting it right, and what do you find them?  As helpless as a flock of sheep—­that’s what you find them.

“More than six months passed, and I saved a little money again.