'Nurse, tell my father I forgive him; and I send my love to my-brother;' and then her eyes closed, as I had prayed they might, and I thought she was sleeping. But it was the death-sleep, as I soon saw, though her face was no paler nor colder.

"I fetched the master, without saying what it was, and brought him to the bedside. The strong man's agony was a fearful sight.

"In a few days my work was ended. I laid my poor lamb in her coffin, and followed her to her grave.

"I left the hall; for though the master offered me to stay, I couldn't now my dear Miss Mabel was gone. I had saved a good bit of money, and I wasn't so young,-it is only ten years ago,-and so I took this cottage, and have lived here alone ever since.

"When I saw what the master had put upon the gravestone, I knew that he was a penitent man. The family left the neighbourhood soon after, and went to live abroad. Mr. Walter has never been heard of since."

I thanked the old woman for her sad story; and as I turned away, I prayed God to have mercy upon me, and not to visit upon my children the sins of their father.

A. D.

In the Mining Districts.

AN old and sacred writer has said, "Light is sweet, and it is a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun."

It was not much of this kind of pleasure we received in riding from a large manufacturing town of South Staffordshire, along a portion of the Stour Valley Railway, into the heart of that mineral district. A stranger, with his Bradshaw before him, on starting for a short trip by this line, might indulge his fancy with bright anticipations of a delightful ride through a charming vale, full of bucolic associations. Is he not going by the winding Stour, and are not the rural stations of Priest Field, Daisy Bank, and Round Oak all lying on his way?

With a harsh sound, as though derisively exulting in our pleasant dreams, the engine sets off. On leaving large towns we in general find factories, foundries, brick-yards, and such-like placed on the outskirts; but here dingy places of business, girt with smoke, and resounding with metallic bump, thump, and rattle, seem more than usually in the ascendant, and by the look of the horizon we are not about to get clear of them just yet. On we fly, with rows of smelting-furnaces at our left, and chimney-stacks of all sorts,-short ones tipped with fire, and others huge and tall rolling out massive volumes of smoke, vieing in size and grandeur with a thunder-cloud,-dying away in the distance until they resemble a forest of dismantled shipmasts, with the smoke of a fiery engagement yet wreathing around the scorched and blackened boles. "Priest Field! Priest Field! Priest Field!" cry the clerk, porter, and guard, in counter, tenor, and bass, as we are pulled up at one of the first stations. Who can describe the revulsion of feeling the poor traveller endures, who, from the name of the place, had been picturing to himself fat meadow-lands near to some noble priory, dotted over with sleek milch kine, with "the village spire among the trees," just seen at the end of the glebe, when the grimy nature of the locality is discerned through the murky atmosphere? The ground through which the cuttings of the railway have been made looks as though some of it came out of a volcanic region, and other deeps from the womb of mother Earth beyond the ken of ordinary mortals, but known well to those who live in this land "whose stones are iron."

Where a bit of the landscape is discernible through the smoke, the debris from the pits and the refuse of the furnaces seem to have it all their own way; and what little of the original surface has not been mounted over with smelting scoria or mineral rubbish, appears to have been turned over for making bricks, and then left in a chaotic state, with the hollows filled with ochry water, the idea of reducing it into an arable state once more being in this neighbourhood considered quite a preposterous notion. I think it was at the next station, which, if any thing, was more densely surrounded by fire and smoke than the last, that I saw an

attempt had been made to grow a few flowers along the side of the platform. For some of them, apparently just planted, I did feel sorry. There was the evening primrose, with its name recalling gentle emotions of sweet summer time in the country; the old-fashioned gilly-flower, so redolent of sweet scents when growing on the wall by the wayside cottage; and the chrysanthemum, which, long before it blooms towards next Christmas, will have had sad experience, and I doubt will not have found the change of air at all agreeable to its feelings. For another old favourite of the flowerborder, London pride, I did not feel so much hurt; for if any of its progenitors had formerly breathed the air of the great city, it would not be a little in the way of blacks and other atmospheric impurities that would affect its constitution.

Daisy Bank! Can any one wonder at a person on first seeing this hopeful name indulging in a poetical reverie of a grassy knoll, as bright with sunlit verdure as Hunt's famed picture of "Our English Coasts," where one could bask with indolent delight, and watch the "laverock" carolling blithely, and rising up and up till it became a wee speck in the sky, just discernible against the light fleecy cloud, and where the modest little flower, the day's-eye, turns its tiny face up to the sun, in all the purity of innocent loveliness?

Rather a different picture to this presents itself when the name of this station is called out, and you awaken to the stern realities of the scene Some days even here I suppose are darker and dirtier than others, and this seemed one of the worst of its kind. It was dull and cloudy, and more than half inclined to drizzle, and the smoke from the innumerable chimneys of the neighbourhood and the surrounding iron-works seemed to thoroughly permeate the air, and form a thick yellow atmosphere. The dense volumes of smoke issuing from some of the large stacks contiguous to the railway did not seem at all inclined to get clear away, but rolled down the sides of the chimneys, as though it did not wish to leave the locality.

Canals were numerous, and when you were far enough away from them to see only the light reflected from their surface, they rather improved the look-out; but a nearer inspection, revealing the dirty state of their turbid water, was far from pleasing. Notwithstanding, however, their impurity, and the coloured film which here and there floated on the top owing to their contamination by oil and grease from the mills and forges, a small boy was sitting on his heels on the bank, and patiently watching his float for a bite. I did not see any creel for the fish, so presumed he would stow them all away in his pocket, collier fashion, without inconvenience. The way this lad was sitting on his heels to enjoy his fishing, is almost peculiar to colliers. If you place your feet near together (flat), on the ground, and then, by bending your knees, bring that part of your person on which you usually sit close to the ground without allowing it to touch, you will (if you succeed in keeping your equilibrium) have some idea of a favourite position colliers very frequently

assume. Having got out of the train at one of these last stations, I could take a nearer view of things in general, and the people in particular.

Among the lower classes of this district there are singular inflections of the voice, besides a way of contracting their negatives which appear strange at first. Such words as "shall not," "will not," and "cannot," they would abbreviate into "shay," "wo," and "caw."

Making a remark on the length of the platform to a puddler, who was muffled up round the neck as though he was sadly afraid of catching a sore throat, he replied, "Lung! why, gaffer, o' haliday toime there ay (is not) room to stir on these boords, yo' ca'(nt) but just wink your oie, aisy loike; but I reckon yo' bay (be not) out o' these parts?"

Being Saturday evening, I find at many of the pits they have finished their work for the week, and men, women, and children are clustered round the hovel waiting to receive their wages, and passing many a friendly joke to while away the time. Some of them are all black and dirty, having but just left their work, while others are cleaned up, the women often with a basket on their arm ready to go to market with the money. I am sorry to find that the truck system, or "tommying," as they call it here, is not yet abolished; a shop being connected with many even of the respectable firms for the purpose of furnishing the workmen with part of their wages in goods, instead of all cash payment. "It is an ill wind which blows nobody any good," and I certainly did find a person who preferred this system. It was a woman with a large family, who said that if she could not go to the shop now and then for some "tommy," her children would be but badly off; for if their Jack (her husband) received all his wages in money at the reckoning, he would spend most of it in drink.

Going by one or two forges, we found some of them still working, the ponderous hammer pounding away at the huge lumps of red-hot iron, and the "shinglers" twisting them about equably to receive those mighty thumps, as easy, apparently, as though they were but snowballs. These shinglers, with big iron boots encasing their legs armorially, have a peculiar and dignified way of walking about. The weight of these metallic overalls, used for protection from the weighty sparks of hot iron and refuse flying from the blow of the forge-hammer, is in part the cause of their heavy style of locomotion; but besides this, being chosen for strength and efficiency, owing to the severe nature of their work, they are in general remarkably fine specimens of the British workman. They wear, too, in front of their caps, a piece of iron gauze, and whilst working they lower this over their eyes, like a vizor, adding still further to their warlike appearance. As many men are not physically strong enough to follow this employment, the shinglers feel their importance, and think no small beer of themselves.

Near to the forge are ovens, where the hammered iron is re-heated, and then, passing many times through the rolls, it is soon converted from a squarish lump into a long thin bar. The men and boys on each side of

the rolls seem to guide these heavy bars in and out in such a light touchand-go sort of style, that it seems quite a nice easy job, but I doubt a stranger would find out his mistake if he took their place.

Monstrous shears are hard by, moving regularly up and down, like the jaws of some huge crocodile, while precocious little lads are supplying them with pieces of iron, which require cutting up into scraps preparatory to their being piled into "billets," heated once more, and rolled again into sheets or bars. It is amusing to see the stolid manner in which this machine slices up bits of iron as thin as paper, or cuts in two with equal indifference heavy bars an inch or two thick and several inches broad. The boys, with apparent carelessness, put their tiny fingers much closer than a stranger would think safe; and I could not but think how some tender mothers would be terrified to have their darlings continually feeding such a relentless monster. The office at some of these works does not seem far removed in size and cleanliness from the pit-cabin we passed just now, and with the bumping of the hammer, which shakes the ground far and near, the vibratory din of the rolls, and clank of engines and workmen, the clerks at work in them cannot have a very delectable time of it. There is always a notable odour of burnt grease about the mills and forges, caused by the hot necks of the rolls heating the dirty-looking composition put upon them, and of which "the fat in the fire" will give you but a poor idea.

Puddlers who had finished their work, with muscular development worthy of the Grecian Athletæ, were washing themselves in the canal, passing their jokes, and splashing each other with water in high glee.

An old woman passing along the road, with her donkey laden with sand and scouring-stones, was a picture to look at, and wanted Mr. Leech's pencil to portray her. An old jim-crow hat was on her head, and hung partly over her face, as if to hide a black eye and a short black pipe seen underneath. The remains of a coat that was originally blue were held together by large flat brass buttons, and beneath this and the tattered shreds of a dirty nondescript gown were a ragged pair of worsted stockings, sadly in need of the washing-tub. She carried a thick stick in her hand, which she occasionally dropped on the crupper of her poor donkey, accompanied by a grunt either of anathema or encouragement. The beast seemed accustomed to this, and shaking his tail by way of acknowledgment, went on still at the same rate. I was told that the donkey and its driver came from a neighbouring district called Gornall, which was very prolific in both kinds of specimens.

After a short absence of a few years from this neighbourhood, the energy of the people is seen to great advantage in the new mineral "fields" that are opened out, and the large number of additional ironworks which have sprung up in every direction. You walked before, perhaps, to some well-known favourite spot, along green fields and through rural lanes, and now you find all this rustic simplicity completely swept away, and the site occupied by blast-furnaces, coke-fires, pits, and brickyards,