* * * * *

‘What’s this you have put into the gruel, Mary?’ said a pale, sickly-looking man one evening, taking something out of his mouth, which he held towards the feeble gleams emitted by a farthing rush-light standing on the mantel-piece.

‘What is it, father?’ inquired a young girl, approaching him.  ’Isn’t the gruel good?’

‘It’s good enough,’ replied the man; ’but here’s something in it:  it’s a shilling, I believe.’

‘It’s a guinea, I declare!’ exclaimed the girl, as she took the coin from him and examined it nearer the light.

‘A guinea!’ repeated the man; ’well, that’s the first bit of luck I’ve had these seven years or more.  It never could have come when we wanted it worse.  Shew it us here, Mary.’

‘But it’s not ours, father,’ said Mary.  ’I paid away the last shilling we had for the meal, and here’s the change.’

’God has sent it us, girl!  He saw our distress, and he sent it us in His mercy!’ said the man, grasping the piece of gold with his thin, bony fingers.

‘It must be Mr Benjamin’s,’ returned she.  ’He must have dropped it into the meal-tub that stands by the counter.’

‘How do you know that?’ inquired the man with an impatient tone and a half-angry glance.  ’How can you tell how it came into the gruel?  Perhaps it was lying at the bottom of the basin, or at the bottom of the sauce-pan.  Most likely it was.’

‘O no, father,’ said Mary:  ‘it is long since we had a guinea.’

’A guinea that we knew of; but I’ve had plenty in my time, and how do you know this is not one we had overlooked?’

‘We’ve wanted a guinea too much to overlook one,’ answered she.  ’But never mind, father; eat your gruel, and don’t think of it:  your cheeks are getting quite red with talking so, and you won’t be able to sleep when you go to bed.’

‘I don’t expect to sleep,’ said the man peevishly; ‘I never do sleep.’

‘I think you will, after that nice gruel!’ said Mary, throwing her arms round his neck, and tenderly kissing his cheek.

‘And a guinea in it to give it a relish too!’ returned the father, with a faint smile and an expression of archness, betokening an inner nature very different from the exterior which sorrow and poverty had incrusted on it.

His daughter then proposed that he should go to bed; and having assisted him to undress, and arranged her little household matters, she retired behind a tattered, drab-coloured curtain which shaded her own mattress, and laid herself down to rest.