140 THE HISTORY OF

dear parents; and my Lady West was so good
as to cause a monument of white stone to be
placed over her grave. These words are en-
graven on the stone :

‘To the memory of Susan GRay, who de-
parted this life in the nineteenth year of her
age, on the 29th day of July, in the year of
our Lord, 1741.

‘“‘ Looking for that blessed hope, and the
glorious appearing of the great God and our
Saviour Jesus Christ. Titus ii. 13.”

Twenty years are now passed since the
death of Susan Gray, yet still she is spoken of
with pleasure and honest pride in our little vil-
lage. Every stranger who visits us is taken
to see her grave, and her story is told by
every mother before she sends her daughter
from her native cottage, to earn her bread in
the wide wicked world.

Mrs. Bennet has been dead nearly ten years:
she died in the workhouse in Ludlow, where
she spent the last five years of her life in a
most miserable way. For after the story of
Susan Gray was known, all her friends for-
sook her, and her customers fell off one by
one; till, at length, the old woman, having
spent the few guineas which the Captain had
given her for her wicked services, was obliged
to give up her cottage, to sell her furniture,
and to go into the poor-house, where, from
confinement and hard living, she soon fell into
a bad state of health, and, having lingered in
sad pain for a few years, died, without one
friend to weep over her. Thus she received