What harm, they asked, could a little talk | those impatient characters who having obdo? They were not going to turn heathens tained, through faith, a good hope for themselves; they believed in God, though those foolish fellows laughed at his name; and in the Bible, though they constantly tried to prove it the vilest book ever written; but now they had made themselves enemies, and all to please her. Helen bore it patiently, as incomparably the least of two evils; and to one or two who seemed more in earnest in their protestations, she tried to show the duty of keeping aloof from all evil communication; but this trial was by far the severest of all that she had to encounter, while continual sorrow oppressed her heart for those among whom she saw the diabolical doctrines gradually spreading, to the utter ruin of body and soul.

eternity, desire to cheat their Master of their poor services here, and would grasp at the crown the moment the cross presses on them. She had no desire to escape its farther endurance, except as a compulsory intercourse with the wicked at times burdened her conscience with a dread of being counted a partaker in their guilt. When a mind keenly alive to the sanctity of God's name and word, has become the involuntary receptacle of blasphemous thoughts uttered by others, the merely mechanical act of memory, apart from all volition, bringing them suddenly forward, perhaps when engaged in the very act of worship, will smite the soul with a pang that none can conceive but those who have experienced it; nay, the very effort to forget will imprint the abhorred idea more legibly on the brain. Exposed to all manner of evil communication, though Helen's good manners were not corrupted, nor her principles in the smallest degree shaken by it, still the defilement was felt; and as the severity of temptation becomes more bitterly trying in proportion to the holiness of the mind that encounters it, to her it was exceedingly terrible. She had learned to practise a greater degree of abstraction than her naturally quick and observant habits would seem to have admitted: it was by continu

What marvel, then, that Helen Fleetwood should rapidly sink under these things? Human nature, as she had recently been forced to see it in the mills, presented to her view an aspect so frightful, that even the companions of her early days seemed to her to rest under some heretofore undiscovered blot; and she often sighed to flee away and to be at rest among the disembodied spirits of the redeemed. James alone, standing as he did on the extreme verge of mortal existence, with heart and hope already fixed in heaven, was an object of unshrinking regard to the poor harassed girl; and evening in secret, ejaculatory prayer, by speakas she looked on Richard's honest coun- ing to herself in psalms and hymns and tenance, beaming with integrity, with spiritual songs, singing and making memanly sincerity, and godly simplicity, the lody in her heart unto the Lord, that she thought arose to repel the yearnings of contrived to shut out a great deal of what innocent affection towards the dear play- others drank in with contented if not with mate of her infancy. "If he was brought greedy ear; but the relief was partial, the among those blaspheming profligates, trial perpetual, increasing, and often wholly what a wretch might he soon become !" unavoidable. Yet, occasionally, when emShe had continual heaviness and sorrow boldened to speak to some of her more of heart, for those around her in the mill; immediate associates in labour, she had and at home she marked the growth of marked the operations of the hands susevil dispositions in the children from whom pended, and the eye turned with inquiry, during hours of work she was usually se- not unmixed with anxiety, to her face: parated. These were the things that and one such instance in a day would send barbed the shaft of disease, striking her her home resigned to endure for any length tender frame through exhausting labour of time the trial of her own precious faith, if in unwholesome air; and she felt the ef- so she might be made instrumental in leadfects too powerfully to entertain an expec-ing the poorest, the vilest, the most despised tation, even had she desired it, of deriving of her class to seek the same mercy. This benefit from any change that would have is Christian principle in its highest, noblest affected the body only. exercise; to stifle self, where self craves spiritual privileges and separation from

But Helen Fleetwood was not one of

the wicked; in order to exhibit before | cannot close your ear against, asks in thunothers the light that may conduct them der the awful question, "WHO SLEW ALL into ways of holiness and peace. THESE?"

as may

CHAPTER XXI.

FARTHER EFFORTS.

The

But what shall we say to this black feature in the factory system? Its existence in the mills generally is too notorious to be denied: no guard is set, no watch is kept, no thought is taken, where the morals of the labourers are concerned. It is to the manufacturing districts that evil men, as to a hot-house, repair to sow the seeds that they desire to see ripening into blasphemy and sedition. The Beast of Socialism fails not indeed to stalk over our fields, and to lay in wait for unwary stragglers among the rural population; but it is in the manufacturing towns he nestles, and builds around him huge trophies with the bones of his slain. There the Chartist is taught secretly to whet his pike, and there the blight of Popery noiselessly spreads, sealing up in a false, fatal peace such souls not be prepared to enter into open league with hell. And against this host of destroyers with what armour does the instructed, the loyal, the professedly church-going master provide his poor ignorant dependents? The toil in which they engage for his advantage, lays them especially open to evil influence, while it debars them from the acquirement of necessary information on matters where to be ignorant is to perish. True, there are not many of Helen Fleetwood's stamp to be wounded unto death by the hearing of what those men would not suffer their own daughters to hear for the wealth, perhaps, of all England's commercial hoards: but there are hundreds and thousands daily yielding to the torrent of iniquity that sweeps through the scene of their insipid toil, glad of any excitement to awaken their drowsy spirits, running the short quick course of unbridled sin, and early dropping off into unnoticed graves. Yes, ye thoughtless holders of these treasuries of immortal souls, your dead are quickly buried out of your sight, and speedily forgotten; but do they not live, to greet you Mr. Barlow was an early riser, and acwhen the earth discloses her blood, and no cording to Richard's calculation, would have more covers her slain; and when, in re- finished his morning meal; but some busiference not merely to the perished body, ness had detained him, and when the sumbut to the writhing souls for ever cut off mons came to enter the study, he appeared from life, for ever doomed to conscious un-seated at his comfortable breakfast, a wellutterable interminable death, a voice you worn Bible open beside him, and all the

A TEMPESTUOUs night of wind and rain had roughened the landscape where now the autumnal sun, still powerful in heat and brilliancy, threw a mantle of light as he ascended from the verge of ocean, whose agitated swell told of a recent tumult amongst those sparkling waves. sounds that rose upon his ear seemed sounds of welcome to the dejected traveller, but found no echo in his bosom. He was weighed down by a sadness that would not yield to any cheering influence, and the recognition that every step compelled him to make, of some object identified with his dearest, fondest recollections, was but the repetition of a secret pang. Richard Green was changed, wholly changed, as regarded his relationship to the things about him. Once they had been numbered as so many future accessories to the happiness of which his young heart loved to dream; now they were tormenting remembrancers of that dream which he almost at times longed to forget, but to which he still clung, as a mother to the corpse of her only babe. He moved with a gait as heavy as formerly it was lightsome; and, when the gardener's lodge first caught his eye, by the 'Squire's gate, his head was instantly averted, as from some unwelcome spectre; but as quickly turned again, with the steadfast resolution to master his feelings, or rather to annihilate them. He passed on, left his packet of letters at the house of the gentleman whose envoy he had been, and then bent his steps towards the parsonage.

placid animation of his character beaming | only Jem was a great deal nearer death; from a countenance that none could look and Helen given over.” on without loving him.

"Welcome Richard, my good lad, your punctuality delights me; I can well guess it cost you something to bid farewell so soon; but, my dear boy, the path of duty is usually a path of self-denial. You look fatigued too, and not by any means well. Come, sit down with me, take a bit of toast and a cup of warm cocoa; it will refresh you."

"Given over!-Helen!-with whatfever?"

"Oh, no, sir; no fever but that fever of heart and soul, that dries up, as it were, the poor body when it is worked and worked, to death-the death of the factories."

"Richard, you astonish, you shock me. I would rather see you in all the agony of unrestrained sorrow than with that unnatural expression. Tears would be preferable to it."

"You'll see no tears on my cheek, Mr. Barlow: I've cried them all out, and I'll cry no more, but be a man; as well I need, to bear all I've got laid upon me."

Richard obeyed, so far as to seat himself on the opposite side of the table, but not a word escaped his compressed lips. The pastor saw that a severe struggle was going on within, and turning back to the preceding page of his book, remarked, "I may as well give you a share in better A little soothing persuasion soon led things while offering a portion of the meat the poor boy to a full disclosure of what that perisheth; hear what a comfortable had befallen the family; while the unpassage has presented itself to me this restrained sympathy, and still more permorning ;" and he read the fourteenth of haps the undisguised indignation of his Hosea. Coming to the 3d verse he re-hearer, ministered a balm to his spirit that peated, "In thee the fatherless findeth he could not resist. He went on to exmercy," and looking up, observed, "That promise is yours, and those who are now, as I well judge, present to your thought, even as though they sat beside us.”

Richard made an attempt to speak, but the hoarse sound was inarticulate; and Mr. Barlow, after one more anxious look in his face, finished the chapter.

"And now, Richard, drink your cocoa." The effort to swallow was successful, though so strong as to crimson the youth's face, and to swell every vein in his forehead. This was succeeded by another conquest, for he spoke, and in a voice though tremulous, yet so calm and clear, that it rather surprized Mr. Barlow, who was prepared for a burst of emotion.

"I humbly ask your pardon, sir, for not speaking directly. Something came over me at first, but it's gone, quite gone."

"And now tell me how you found and how you left them all."

"I found them, sir, in great poverty: my grandmother changed, as if by twenty years; Jem dying, and the rest-in the factory."

He spoke the last three words with an expression such as Mr. Barlow had never before seen on his countenance: then after a short pause resumed,

patiate, and leaning his elbow on the little table, his cheek on his hand, forgetful of all the respectful distance that he had always observed, he told, with melancholy composure, the tale of his youthful hopes and anticipations, with their sudden blight; ending with, "And so, as you'll never be called on to marry us, Mr. Barlow, I can only hope it might be allowed her to come here alive, that you might bury her."

The kind-hearted minister wept outright, and Richard, looking at him with gratified feeling, said, "I should like to cry too, sir; but somehow, I can't."

"My poor boy, this is a heavy dispensation. Oh, what have they to answer for who laid this cruel snare in the harmless path of the widow and the fatherless? Kneel down with me, Richard; we have one Friend able and willing to succour, and to save to the uttermost." He poured forth a most touching supplication, such as, a few days before, would have melted Richard; but though the "Amen" was breathed from his inmost heart, he rose collected and tearless as ever. In answer to farther enquiries, he said,

"Mary and Willy may be got out of the vile mills at last; but you see, sir, "I left them, sir, much as I found them, Jem will hardly live through the week;

granny can't hold out very long, she is so broke down; and Helen, they tell me, will fail all at once, and go away like a wreath of smoke. Ay," he added, with sudden animation, "and she'll go, like smoke, upwards; and when we lose sight of her she'll be mingled with the sky. That's a comforting thought, sir."

Deeply affected, Mr. Barlow grasped his hand, and bidding him be sure to return to him in the evening, took his hat, to search out his friend the doctor.

This gentleman's feelings were excited to so high a pitch that he ejaculated a hope he should not fall in with Stratton, till he had time to cool. Then said, "Let Green write immediately a cheering account of his safe arrival, and enclose a note from me, which Helen must take to her doctor. At least, I'll find out whether returning here might not save her."

The note was written, sent, delivered, and answered with equal candor and skill: the case was at least hopeless; and the removal impracticable: for, as the writer observed, the violence done to her feelings in separating her from those to whom she was so strongly bound, would speedily finish the work which no human means were likely to arrest in its quiet but rapid course.

repeat, and we wondered where he got them; but the meaning was, that all this only made him feel how close he was held within the arms of the Lord Jesus; so that though earth might pass from under him, and hell open before him, he could not feel fear, for he was in no danger. I humbly crave your prayers, honoured sir, that when my time comes, which is not long, I may be as happy as James was, and as little afraid; but if not as happy, I hope I shall be as safe as he; for the same God is my God, and the same Saviour is my Saviour; and the same light will guide me through the dark valley of the shadow of death to the place where sorrow and sighing flee away."

Mr. Barlow having taken a copy of this letter, gave the original to Richard, rightly judging it contained a prospective no less than a present consolation for the poor youth, who, deeply humbled under the afflicting rod, went softly and sorrowfully about his daily work, uncomplaining, but evidently broken-hearted. One day, some weeks after this event, he was surprised at his employment by the doctor, who, approaching with the look of a man intent on a benevolent object, said, "Green, 1 know you will be glad to hear that business of an unexpected nature calls me within a few miles of M. where I mean to go, and to devote a day or two entirely to your family. Such an opening must not be neglected; and I want to consult you as to the plan to be pursued."

Richard leaned on his spade, and fixed his sparkling eyes on the speaker, as if anxious for some farther confirmation of what seemed too good to be true.

A few days more brought a letter from Helen herself to Mr. Barlow, requesting him to break as gently as might be, to Richard, the tidings it conveyed. She went on-"We expected it too long to be unprepared, but it is a sore stroke too: and yet, honoured sir, if you were here, looking at the sweet smile upon his pale, cold face, you would say death is more beautiful than life. James talked of you, "It cannot be denied," pursued the and prayed for you to the last; and said doctor, "that your grandmother was unhe should be in your crown of rejoicing fairly dealt with through the artifices of a at that day. He said if you knew the strange man, who found but too ready a value of but one soul, as nothing but a co-operation here. We must take the laws dying bed could teach you, that you as we find them, our duty is to submit, for would think a whole life's labour well the Lord's sake to every ordinance of spent even to gather in the soul of a poor | little boy like him. Oh, sir, it must be terrible to feel the world sliding away, as it were, from under one's feet, and the fiery pit standing open beneath, and nothing to catch hold of to keep one from falling into it. Our James saw it all, and he said things that I cannot tell you exactly, for he used finer words than I can the family who may be found wholly

man; but when we see a legal enactment stretched to the extent of oppressing the poor, it becomes the duty of every Christian to assist his afflicted fellow-subjects in bearing a burden that we cannot remove from their shoulders. I have tried my utmost at the vestry, but all I can obtain is a conditional promise that any member of

unable to labour, shall be admitted, to- ties might soon press on you, and the charge of a growing family leave you

"To the work-house, sir," interrupted without the means, however strong your Richard, quietly. inclination might be, to provide for your aged parent."

"The aggressor seldom forgives the in-ness we will decide nothing. My visit to jured person," remarked Richard.