“They cannot,” said Harley, “they cannot; I shall never see the sward covered with its daisies, nor pressed by the dance of the dear innocents:  I shall never see that stump decked with the garlands which their little hands had gathered.  These two long stones, which now lie at the foot of it, were once the supports of a hut I myself assisted to rear:  I have sat on the sods within it, when we had spread our banquet of apples before us, and been more blessed—­Oh!  Edwards, infinitely more blessed, than ever I shall be again.”

Just then a woman passed them on the road, and discovered some signs of wonder at the attitude of Harley, who stood, with his hands folded together, looking with a moistened eye on the fallen pillars of the hut.  He was too much entranced in thought to observe her at all, but Edwards, civilly accosting her, desired to know if that had not been the school-house, and how it came into the condition in which they now saw it.

“Alack a day!” said she, “it was the school-house indeed; but to be sure, sir, the squire has pulled it down because it stood in the way of his prospects.”

“What! how! prospects! pulled down!” cried Harley.

“Yes, to be sure, sir; and the green, where the children used to play, he has ploughed up, because, he said, they hurt his fence on the other side of it.”

“Curses on his narrow heart,” cried Harley, “that could violate a right so sacred!  Heaven blast the wretch!

“And from his derogate body never spring A babe to honour him!” —

But I need not, Edwards, I need not” (recovering himself a little), “he is cursed enough already:  to him the noblest source of happiness is denied, and the cares of his sordid soul shall gnaw it, while thou sittest over a brown crust, smiling on those mangled limbs that have saved thy son and his children!”

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

He followed her without knowing whither he went.

They stopped at 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.

“There, sir, is the school-mistress.”

“Madam,” said Harley, “was not an old venerable man school-master here some time ago?”

“Yes, sir, he was, poor man; the loss of his former school-house, I believe, broke his heart, for he died soon after it was taken down, and as another has not yet been found, I have that charge in the meantime.”

“And this boy and girl, I presume, are your pupils?”

“Ay, sir; they are poor orphans, put under my care by the parish, and more promising children I never saw.”

“Orphans?” said Harley.

“Yes, sir, of honest creditable parents as any in the parish, and it is a shame for some folks to forget their relations at a time when they have most need to remember them.”