How few words may convey a great sorrow! "Thomas was gone for a soldier !”—And the poor mother flung herself at her length on the ground, and gasped and sobbed as though she would never speak again.

"Gone for a soldier !" exclaimed Amy-" Left you! Oh, he never can be so cruel, so wicked! He'll come back, dear nurse !" (for Amy always called Dame Clewer nurse, as her mother had been used to do.) "He'll be sure to come back! Thomas is such a good son, with all his wildness. He'll come back-I know he will."

"He can't!" replied poor nurse, trying to rouse herself from her misery. "He can't come, how much so ever he may wish it; they'll not let him. Nothing can get him off but money, and I have none to give." And again the mother's tears choked her words. "My poor boy must go !" Money!" said Amy, "I have half a crown, that godmamma gave me, and two shillings and three sixpences; I'll go and fetch them in a moment."

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Blessings on your dear heart!" sobbed Dame Clewer; 66 your little money would be of no use. The soldier who came to tell me, offered to get him off for five pounds: but where am I to get five pounds? All my goods and all my clothes would not raise near such a sum: and even if any body was willing to lend money to a poor old creature like me, how should I ever be able to pay it? No! Thomas must go-go to the East Indies, as the soldier said, to be killed by the sword or to die of the fever!-I shall never see his dear face again! Never!" And turning resolutely from the pitying child, she bent over the clothes in the basket, trying to unfold them with her trembling hands and

to hang them out to dry; but, unable in her agony to separate the wet linen, she burst into a passion of tears, and stood leaning against the clothes' line, which quivered and vibrated at every sob, as if sensible of the poor mother's misery.

Amy on her part, sat on the steps leading to the house, watching her in silent pity."Oh, if mamma were alive!" thought the little girl-" or papa! or if I dared ask aunt Lloyd! or if I had the money of my own; or any thing that would fetch the money!" And just as she was thinking this very thought, Floss, wondering to see his little mistress so still and sad, crept up to her, and put his paw in her lap and whined. "Dear Floss!" said Amy unconsciously, and then suddenly remembering what Lady Lumley had said to her, she took the dog up in her arms, and coloured like scarlet, from a mingled emotion of pleasure and pain, for Flossy had been her own mamma's dog, and Amy loved him dearly. For full five minutes she sat hugging Flossy and kissing his sleek shining head, whilst the faithful creature licked her cheeks and her hands, and nestled up to her bosom, and strove all he could to prove his gratitude, and return her caresses. For full five minutes she sat without speaking; at last she went to Dame Clewer, and gave the dog into her arms.

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Lady Lumley offered me five guineas for Flossy this morning," said she; "take him, dear nurse, and take the money; but beg her to be kind to him," continued poor Amy, no longer able to restrain her tears" beg her to be very kind to my Floss!" And, with a heart too full even to listen to the thanks and blessings which the happy mother was showering upon her head, the little girl turned away.

But did Lady Lumley buy Flossy? And was Thomas Clewer discharged? Yes, Thomas was discharged, for Sir John Lumley spoke to his colonel; and he returned to his home and his fond mother, quite cured of his wildness and his fancy for being a soldier. But Lady Lumley did not buy Floss, because, as she said, however she might like him, she never could bear to deprive so good a girl as Amy of any thing that gave her pleasure. She would not buy Floss, but she continued to take great notice both of him and his little mistress, had them often at the castle, always made Amy a Christmas present, and talks of taking her for her own maid when she grows up.

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS.

THE COBBLER OVER THE WAY.

ONE of the noisiest inhabitants of the small irregular town of Cranley, in which I had the honour to be born, was a certain cobbler, by name Jacob Giles. He lived exactly over-right our house, in a little appendage to the baker's shop,an excrescence from that goodly tenement, which, when the door was closed (for the tiny square window at its side was all but invisible), might, from its shape and its dimensions, be mistaken for an

* Townlet old Leland would have called it, and truly the word is worth borrowing.

oven or a pigstye, ad libitum. By day, when the half-hatch was open, and the cobbler discovered at work within, his dwelling seemed constructed purposely to hold his figure; as nicely adapted to its size and motions, as the little toy called a weatherhouse is to the height and functions of the puppets who inhabit it ;-only that Jacob Giles's stall was less accommodating than the weather-house, inasmuch as by no chance could his apartment have been made to contain two inmates in any position whatsoever.

At that half-hatch might Jacob Giles be seen stitching and stitching, with the peculiar regular two-handed jerk proper to the art of cobbling, from six in the morning to six at night,-deducting always certain mornings and afternoons and whole days given, whenever his purse or his credit would permit, to the ensnaring seductions of the tap-room at the King's-head. At all other seasons at the half-hatch he might be seen, looking so exactly like a Dutch picture, that I, simple child that I was, took a fine Teniers in my father's possession for a likeness of him. There he sat-with a dirty red night-cap over his grizzled hair, a dingy waistcoat, an old blue coat, darned, patched, and ragged, a greasy leather apron, a pair of crimson plush inexpressibles, worsted stockings of all the colours known in hosiery, and shoes that illustrated the old saying of the shoemaker's wife, by wanting mending more than any shoes in the parish.

The face belonging to this costume was rough and weather-beaten, deeply lined and deeply tinted, of a right copper-colour, with a nose that would have done honour to Bardolph, and a certain indescribable half-tipsy look, even when sober. Nevertheless, the face, ugly and tipsy as it was, had

its merits. There was humour in the wink and in the nod, and in the knowing roll with which he transferred the quid of tobacco, his constant recreation and solace, from one cheek to the other; there was good-humour in the half-shut eye, the pursed-up mouth, and the whole jolly visage; and in the countless variety of strange songs and ballads which, from morning to night he poured forth from that half-hatch, there was a happy mixture of both. There he sat, in that small den, looking something like a thrush in a goldfinch's cage, and singing with as much power, and far wider range, -albeit his notes were hardly so melodious:Jobson's songs in the Devil to Pay,' and

"A cobbler there was, and he lived in a stall,

Which served him for parlour, for kitchen and hall,"

being his favourites.

The half-hatch was, however, incomparably the best place in which to see him, for his face, with all its grotesqueness, was infinitely pleasanter to look at than his figure, one of his legs being shorter than the other, which obliged him to use a crutch, and the use of the crutch having occasioned a protuberance of the shoulder, which very nearly invested him with the dignity of a hump. Little cared he for his lameness! He swung along merrily and rapidly, especially when his steps tended to the alehouse, where he was a man of prime importance, not merely in right of his good songs and his good-fellowship, but in graver moments, as a scholar, and a politician, being the best reader of a newspaper, and the most sagacious commentator on a debate, of any man who frequented the tap, the parish clerk himself not excepted.

Jacob Giles had, as he said, some right to talk