42 THE TWO APPRENTICES.

breezy autumn air, as he strolled along through the
old pasture fields, and saw the feathery seeds of the
thistle and the great groundsel lifted up and carried
over his head by the wind, and the yellow harvest-
fields lying amid the deep repose of the woodlands
around, and the harvesters piling up the golden
shocks of corn on the heavy wain, which moved om-
ward now and then, silently as ina dream. Heat
down on the dry slope of the field, with the little
shrubby tufts of the rosy-hued rest-harrow at his
feet ; and thought about his past life and his future.
There was a deal of hardship, and sorrow, and trouble
in his past life, which was best known to himself and
to his Almighty Father; and which he someway or
other shrunk from telling to his kind aunts. There
. was no use in telling it to them, he thought, and he
was right ; for it would have done them no good, nor
him either, All this now passed in clear review be-
fore him ; it was like a procession of dark shadows ;
one after another they went by, and ended in that
wet night of May-fair day and his mother’s death.
But yet that death was not as sad as many things in
her life had been; and the boy thought of her grave
in the little churchyard of her native town as of her
truest resting-place. The only pleasant thought in
the past was of his little sister,—the little rosy-
cheeked Susan, who was left with the old Methodist
grandmother at Truro in Cornwall. Susan was very
happy ; and above all things liked going with the old
woman to chapel, where the people all sang so loud.
It was a pleasant thought, that of Susan. Then came
his aunts,—Dorothy, blind, and with her hair like
snow, yet as cheerful as a lark, and so active! No-
. body that saw her at home could ever think her