Stephen carried his basin of potatoes to the door-sill and sat there, with his back turned to the dismal hut and his dying father, and his face looking out upon the green hills.  He had always been a grave and thoughtful boy; and he had much to think of now.  The deep sense of new duties and obligations that had come upon him with his father’s words, made him feel that his boyhood had passed away.  He looked round upon the garden, and the field, and the hut, with the keen eye of an owner; and he wondered at the neglected state into which they had fallen since his father’s illness.  There could be no more play-time for him; no bird’s-nesting among the gorse-bushes; no rabbit-bunting with Snip, the little white terrier that was sharing his supper.  If little Nan and his grandfather were to be provided for, he must be a man, with a man’s thoughtfulness, doing man’s work.  There seemed enough work for him to do in the field and garden alone, without his twelve hours’ toil in the coal-pit; but his weekly wages would now be more necessary than ever.  He must get up early, and go to bed late, and labour without a moment’s rest, doing his utmost from one day to another, with no one to help him, or stand for a little while in his place.  For a few minutes his brave spirit sank within him, and all the landscape swam before his eyes; while Snip took advantage of his master’s inattention to put his nose into the basin, and help himself to the largest share of the potatoes.

‘I mean to be like grandmother,’ said Martha’s clear, sharp voice, close beside him, and he saw his sister looking eagerly round her.  ’I shall fence the green in, and have lambs and sheep to turn out on the hillside, and I’ll rear young goslings and ducks for market; and we’ll have a brick house, with two rooms in it, as well as a shed for the coal.  And nobody shall put upon us, or touch our rights, Stephen, or they shall have the length of my tongue.’

‘Martha,’ said Stephen earnestly, ’do you see how a shower is raining down on the master’s fields at Botfield; and they’ve been scorched up for want of water?’

‘Yes, surely,’ answered Martha; ‘and what of that?’

‘I’m thinking,’ continued Stephen, rather shyly, ’of that verse in my chapter:  “He maketh the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.”  What sort of a man is the master, Martha?’

‘He’s a bad, unjust, niggardly old miser,’ replied Martha.

‘And if God sends him rain, and takes care of him,’ Stephen said, ’how much more care will He take of us, if we are good, and try to do His commandments!’

‘I should think,’ said Martha, but in a softer tone, ’I should really think He would give us the green, and the lambs, and the new house, and everything; for both of us are good, Stephen.’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Stephen; ’if I could read all the Bible, perhaps it would tell us.  But now I must go in and read my chapter to father.’