into a corner, whipped off everything but our shirts, put something about our necks for halters, and down on our bare knees with the rest! Thus we came in for our share when he cried, "I pardon ye all."

Ah! he was a good and merciful king then. It has been only by little and little that he has changed. He's a warning to you all, boys. He was as good as any of you, then. And for my part, I cannot help remembering the kindness of his youth, especially concerning that Evil May Day.

B

O you know what a fright the village is in ?" said Miss Hester Apreece, a gentle old lady, who, with her elder sister, lived in the smallest of genteel lodgings, on the smallest of genteel incomes. These two were samples of a very large class-spinsters, that were honours to womanhood, not libels on it. Theirs were not the envenomed tongues that carry evil reports, whether true or false, from house to house. They would rather cover a scandal and hush it up. True, they were fond of gossip-or, rather, small talk-but it was flavoured with the milk of human kindness. In earlier days they had entered moderately into society-and good country society, too; but they were not literary, or witty, or brilliant. It is to be supposed they had the usual hopes and wishes that arise in the youthful heart; but if these hopes and wishes faded away, and they found themselves left unregarded and stranded on Lethe's wharf, while others, gayer and more prosperous, sailed merrily by with a favouring wind, it did not convert their sweetness into acerbity, nor make them find a poor pleasure in speaking evil of their neighbours.

Hence, if you went to them with the intention of an hour's chat, you might be pretty sure it would turn chiefly on the small affairs of the living and occasional anecdotes of the dead; but that you would never have need to say afterwards

"At every word a reputation died."

Therefore, when Miss Hester Apreece said to her friends, the Monktons, "Have you heard what a fright the village is in ?" the mother and daughters looked up from their knitting, netting, and crochet, or whatever female handiwork they might be about, with pleasant and harmless interest.

It was a homely matter, after all, nothing to write a sensation story about, but yet one that stirred every mother of young children in the place; and it is quite worth my while to write about, and yours to read, because an easy solution was found of a difficulty that was theirs, and may, some time or other, be yours.

There was a passage-boat that made daily trips between the mainland and the pleasant little fishing-village of Sandynook, which is the scene of my story. Sandynook is in a neighbouring island. I have not seen it this many a year. It was a small place then, it is probably a small place now, out of the common route of tourists, and too tame in its prettiness ever to become much worth hunting up. There were very few gentry; but among these few were some offshoots of nobility. It was very quiet, it was very cheap, which were attractions to this little coterie; it was also very healthy, so that there was no resident medical man, nor need of one. The nearest practitioner lived at a large watering-place thirteen miles

off-thirteen, that is by land (heading the creek), six by sea; but, of course, a doctor's gig went by the former, though the captain's gig went by the latter. Once a week, then, Mr. Jones went his rounds, and came to Sandynook in the course of them; put up his horse and gig, unlocked the door of a little triangular parlourwhich he used for his consulting-room and dispensaryreceived patients, inquired into cases-if there were any -gave a draught to one, a box of pills to another, and always bade the recipient return the pill-box.

This may seem foreign to my story, but it is not so. It was autumn. Barford's boat had crossed and come back again as usual, laden with its usual kind of cargo: a quart of vinegar for one, two pounds of fresh butter for another, a piano, a smoke-jack, and a few passengers. We will not inquire whether any of the women returned, lightened of the bladders of smuggled brandy they sometimes carried over under their petticoats. Among the passengers this time came a poor woman of the lowest class-perhaps not wrongly described as a tramp, and this woman carried a baby under her cloak. This mother and baby took up their abode in the only place there was for them, the common lodging-house, where there were several poor lodgers already; and then, too late, it was discovered that the baby was covered with small-pox.

So this it was which put the village in a panic, and well it might. It need not have done so, mark you, had the children been duly vaccinated; but that was far from being the case. We know how difficult it is to get poor people to attend to this important precaution, even when they have every facility, which at Sandynook they had

not.

It was not always convenient to mothers living in outlying farmhouses and cottages to come to Mr. Jones's lodging on the day and hour appointed. Perhaps if they did, they found he had not the needful; anyhow, they generally threw the blame on him, and then felt their consciences relieved of the obligation-just as if that saved their children from danger.

"Ah, my friends!" as their good clergyman used to say sometimes in the pulpit, when he was driving a plain truth home to them; "may we not spiritualise this a little?" I am sure we may, if we have a mind. Were the Sandynook mothers the only people that neglected to do what they should for their children, laid the blame on somebody else, and then discharged their consciences? Do parents never do this with regard to things that appertain to the soul, as well as the body?-Ah, my friends!

Now, too late, the villagers were frightened out of their senses to find a baby with the eruption full on it located in their midst, and went about piteously saying, "Oh! what shall we do?"

"Many may even have taken the infection already," said Miss Hester, looking anxiously at Mrs. Monkton, whom she was accustomed, even on short acquaintance, to consider a sort of household oracle; "but at any rate those not yet infected should be kept out of harm's way; only what should be done ?"

"That which ought to have been done before," said Mrs. Monkton; "they should all be vaccinated without delay."

"That's what I think; only who's to do it ?"

"The parish authorities ought to enforce it."