Such a man then had been Roger Acton from his youth up till now, or, if sadness must be told, nearly until now; for, to speak truth, his heart at times would fail him, and of late he had been bitter in repinings and complaint.  For a day or two, in particular, he had murmured loudly.  It was hard, very hard, that an honest, industrious man, as he was, should so scantily pick a living out of this rich earth:  after all said, let the parson preach as he will, it’s a fine thing to have money, and that his reverence knows right well, or he wouldn’t look so closely for his dues. [N.B.  Poor Mr. Evans was struggling as well as he could to bring up six children, on a hundred and twenty pounds per annum.] Roger, too, was getting on in years, with a blacker prospect for the future than when he first stood behind a plough-tail.  Then there were many wants unsatisfied, which a bit of gold might buy; and his wife teased him to be doing something better.  Thus was it come at length to pass, that, although he had endured so many years, he now got discontented at his penury;—­what human heart can blame him?—­and with murmurings came doubt; with doubt of Providence, desire of lucre; so the sunshine of religion faded from his path;—­what mortal mind can wonder?

CHAPTER II.

The family; the home; and more repinings.

Now, if Malthus and Martineau be verily the pundits that men think them, Roger had twice in his life done a very foolish thing:  he had sinned against society, statistics, and common sense, by a two-fold marriage.  The wife of his youth (I am afraid he married early) had once been kitchen-maid at the Hall; but the sudden change from living luxuriously in a great house, to the griping poverty of a cotter’s hovel, had changed, in three short years, the buxom country girl into an emaciated shadow of her former self, and the sorrowing husband buried her in her second child-bed.  The powers of the parish clapped their hands; political economy was glad; prudence chuckled; and a coarse-featured farmer (he meant no ill), who occasionally had given Roger work, heartlessly bade him be thankful that his cares were the fewer and his incumbrance was removed; “Ay, and Heaven take the babies also to itself,” the Herodian added.  But Acton’s heart was broken! scarcely could he lift up his head; and his work, though sturdy as before, was more mechanical, less high-motived:  and many a year of dreary widowhood he mourned a loss all the greater, though any thing but bitterer, for the infants so left motherless.  To these, now grown into a strapping youth and a bright-eyed graceful girl, had he been the tenderest of nurses, and well supplied the place of her whom they had lost.  Neighbours would have helped him gladly—­sometimes did; and many was the hinted offer (disinterested enough, too, for in that match penury must have been the settlement, and starvation the dower), of giving