66 DIGGING A GRAVE
look -at, hard to bear. Well, Mary, Mrs.

Layton’s mother was an angel ; and I was

brought up, as one may say, to run at her

foot; and when she married —and she mar- —

ried as fine a looking gentleman and as
noble, as you'll meet on the face of | the
earth; kind and gentle, too, when it was
himself was in it; and with the prospéct —
of riches; he thought he loved the ground
she walked on; yet, he broke her ‘heart ;
she withered off the earth, with the sorrow
and the shame he brought her to. My poor
dear darling, when she married I went to
be her maid; and it was not long before I
saw that the young master was seldom to
call himself - after ‘dinner ; the love of the
drink was in him. And sore sorry was I
to find that his father had the same fault -
a. jolly companion,’ they called him, down >
in the gay hunting country, where he was

bred and born; and when my poor young