1

A POOR man went out one day to cut some peat1 in a meadow which lay among the hills. It was a lonely place, and he took his son with him, a child about four years old.

While he was at work, the boy was at play, trying to catch a kid which was feeding on the hill. The kid ran about, now here, now there, jumping over the rocks, skipping over heaps of stones, and running up and down the grassy mounds, with the boy in full chase after him.

The man saw that the child was pleased with the sport, and went on with his work. After a time he looked up again, but he could not see the child. He was afraid that he might have fallen into some of the peat holes, or over some of the rocks, and he went to look for him.

He called him in vain, but he could see nothing of him. He heard nothing but the sound of his own voice. At length he came upon the prints of the child's footsteps in the soft part of the meadow; but he did not cross over a stone wall which ran along the steep and rocky side of a hill down to the

1 Peat, a species of turf, composed of vegetable matter, used for fuel

edge of a stream.

He thought so young a child

could not climb over the wall.

Night came on, and, meeting a shepherd, he asked

him to go home for help.

Friends and neighbors mother, to aid in the

came, and with them the search for the poor child on those wild and rocky hills.

One of the men, having crossed the stone wall, called out to the rest to come over. "Look here," said he; "here are the prints of the child's feet plain enough. They look as if he had been chasing something."

"Yes," said the father; "he was chasing a young kid; I little thought he would stray away from me." They followed the footsteps down to the brink of a stream, where they lost all trace of them.

"O, my child! my darling child!" said the poor mother, as she wept and wrung her hands. "He has fallen into the stream, and is surely drowned."

"Keep up your heart, wife," said the father; "he may be safe. We will not give him up yet." They went some way along the banks of the stream, till they again found the prints of the child's bare feet on the soft sand of a small brook. They now went on with more hope.

XV. THE LOST CHILD, CONCLUDED.

NIGHT was coming on fast, and it grew dark upon the hills. It was a wild, lonely place. The moon showed some light, but the clouds were thick and black.

The search had gone on since noon, and when they had walked nearly five miles, they began to think it useless to go farther. The poor mother was in great grief, fearing to find her child dead at the foot of some steep rock, or drowned in the stream.

Just at this time, when some of the men stood still, saying that it was useless to go on, and that it was too dark to see any thing, a man who had gone on before shouted out, "Come on! come on! Here is the boy's hat in the stream, stopped by a large stone as it was floating down."

Then the father and mother both wept; and the father said, "The poor boy is certainly drowned."

"Come on! come on!" again shouted the man in front; "do not give him up. He may have dropped his hat. Come on! I think I see something now. Look! here he is!" And there indeed was the child on the bank, lying with his feet in the stream, and his head on a stone, not dead, but sound asleep.

The poor mother could not speak, but the father cried out, "David! David! are you alive?"

The child raised his head from the stone, and

said, "O father, why did you not come to help me catch the little kid?"

It was evident to them all that the child had gone on in chase of the kid from rock to rock, over rough ground and soft, with bare feet, for nearly five miles, and no harm had befallen him.

He had sat down to rest and wash his feet, and had fallen asleep. He did not know how far he was from home, and when he awoke, his first thought was of the kid. He was much too young to know the risk he had run, or the grief he had caused to his father and mother.

XVI. THE OLD BEGGAR.

AROUND the fire, one wintry night,
The farmer's rosy children sat;
The fagot lent its blazing light,

And jokes went round, and harmless chat.

When, hark! a gentle hand they hear
Low tapping at the bolted door,
And thus, to gain their willing ear,
A feeble voice was heard implore: -

"Cold blows the blast across the moor,
The sleet drives hissing in the wind;
Yon toilsome mountain lies before,
A dreary, treeless waste behind.

66

"My eyes are weak and dim with age;
No road, no path can I descry;
And these poor rags ill stand the rage
Of such a keen, inclement sky.

"So faint I am, these tottering feet
No more my palsied frame can bear;
My freezing heart forgets to beat,

And drifting snows my tomb prepare.

"Open your hospitable door,

And shield me from the biting blast; Cold, cold it blows across the moor,

The weary moor that I have passed."