an inkhorn with a pen in it was dangling from one of the buttonholes.

"If it's rates or taxes," she said, "you must seize at once for I have n't a farthing."

The man in black made no answer, but kept prying through his green glasses at the circle of young faces, and at length fixed upon Dick.

"Did n't I see you, my lad, looking in at the window of a cookshop?"

"Yes," answered Dick, "and you asked me about the family, and if we was n't in distress."

"Very good," said the man in black. "And you replied that you were in very deep distress indeed." "Yes, for a sarcepan," said Dick.

"It was to boil our Christmas pudding," said the widow. "But we haven't got one, sir, nor no hopes of one."

Very good," said the man in black. "I am a Perambulating Member of the District Benevolent Visitation Society, and am come to relieve your wants."

"You are very good, I'm sure," said the widow, quite flustered by such moral plunges from hot to cold, and then to hot again. "As you say, sir, I have seen better days," though

how or when the gentleman said so was known only to herself. "Yes, for twenty years I have been a householder, and up to this time have never missed celebrating my Christmas in a respectable way. And I do own it would go nigh to break my heart."

66

Very good, very good," said the man in black, busily writing in the red book, from which he eventually tore out a leaf, that he folded up and presented to the widow.

"There's an order, ma'am, for what you want."

"The Lord in heaven bless you!" cried the widow, starting up from her chair, with a first impulse to throw herself on the good man's neck; and a second one, to go down on her knees to him; but which she checked just as the genuflection arrived at the proper point for a very profound courtsey.

"O, sir! - but I'm too full to speak. Yet, if the prayers

of a widow and six fatherless children

Very good, very good, very good," said the man in black, waving off the six ragged dirty, grateful fatherless children,

who wanted to hug and kiss him- and shuffling as fast as he could to the door, through which he bolted more like a detected swindler than a professed Samaritan.

"Well, that comes of trusting to Providence," said the widow, quite forgetting a recent lapse, the least in the world, towards atheism. "Come, children, sing 'O be joyful,' for we have got our pudding at last.”

The children needed no further hint; but at once joined hands, and began dancing round the table, as if the grand object of their hopes had been already smoking in the middle

Dick whistling "Merrily danced the Quaker's wife," as loud and fast as he could rattle it, whilst the mother ecstatically beat time with her head and foot. At last they were all out of breath.

There, that will do," said the widow. "Now then, some of you put on your hats and bonnets to fetch the things; for, of course, it's an order on the baker and the grocer.'

"It's an order," said Careful Susan, reading very deliberately the paper which she had taken from her mother's passive hand, an order for six yards of flannel.” "Flannin!"

"Yes, flannel.”

The widow snatched the paper; glanced at it; threw it from her; and dropped into her chair; not as if for a temporary rest, but as though she would fain have sunk through the bottom of it, and right through the floor, and down through the foundation of the house, and six foot of earth beneath, for a quiet grave.

In a moment she had six comforters at her neck; not woollen ones, but quite as warm and more affectionate, though their loving assiduities were repelled.

"Don't hang on me don't! And don't tell me to hope, for I won't! I can't be consoled! So don't come nigh me no, not even if you see me fainting away for I'm grown desperate, like an over driv beast, and don't know what I may commit!"

The panic-stricken children instinctively backed into a distant semicircle, and fixing their eyes on their parent, as if she had really been the enraged animal she had described, awaited in awful silence her next words. At last they came in a fierce, harsh voice.

"Wipe Jackey's nose."

A brother and sister on either hand of the little one immediately performed the desired office; and then trembling waited the next command.

"Tear up that devilish
that devilish paper!"

Susan immediately picked up the unfortunate order, but as she hesitated, with her usual prudence, to destroy what was equivalent to six yards of flannel, Dirty Polly snatched the paper from her, and tore it up as small as she could mince it.

"I have hoped as long as I could,” cried the widow, suddenly starting to her feet, "but now I give up! When bad luck sets in that way, blow upon blow, it's for good. We shall never prosper again never, never, never! We're a ruined family, root and branch—and if it was not for the sin, I'd wish nothing better at this blessed moment than to have you all six tied round my waist, enjoying a Serpentine death!

At this horrible picture, which the speaker dramatized by frantically throwing up her arms, as at the fatal plunge, and then letting herself sink gradually, by a sort of courtsey, as if subsiding into the mud, the poor devoted children set up a general howl; and then broke into a series of sobbings and ejaculations, only checked by the opening of the door and the entrance of another stranger.

If the former visitor resembled a tax-gatherer, his successor hardly made a more favorable impression on the widow, from whom, had he asked the same question as the Baronet in the Poor Gentleman, "Do I look like a bailiff?" he would probably have received the same answer "I don't know but you do." He had no red book in his hand, and no inkhorn at his buttonhole; but he carried a very formidable bludgeon, and wore a very odd wig, and a very broad-brimmed hat, as much on one side as a yacht in a squall. Altogether there was such an air of disguise about him, that if not a bailiff, he was certainly, as the next best guess, a policeman in plain clothes.

"I believe, ma'am," said the stranger, "you have just had a visit from an agent of a Benevolent Society?"

“Yes, and be hanged to him!" thought the widow; “and perhaps you're another!" but she held her tongue. The

stranger, therefore, repeated his question to Susan, as the eldest of the children, and was answered in the affirmative. "I knew it," said the stranger. "And he asked if you were not in distress; and you said that you were, and he told you he was come to relieve it."

"Yes, with six yards

"burst from several voices. "Hush hold your little tongues! I know it all-with an order for six yards of flannel-was n't it so? Six yards of flannel for a Christmas pudding— ha! ha! ha!"

The children would have laughed too, but they were afraid. The stranger had suddenly turned into a conjurer, who knew their thoughts and wishes.

"You are right indeed, sir," said the widow. himself by some hard name.”

"He called

Yes, an ambulating member," said the stranger, "of the District Visitation. I know them well. Six yards of flannel just like them. That's their way. That's their way. There was poor Biddy Hourigan, an Irish Catholic, ma'am they visited her, too, and found her in deep distress, not about a pudding though, but because she had not a farthing in the world to get her husband out of purgatory. And how do you think, ma'am, they relieved a poor soul in purgatory? Why, with a bushel of coals!

"Is it possible?" exclaimed the widow; adding, in the simplicity of her heart, "that perhaps it was in the winter?" "No, ma'am, there's no winter there," said the stranger. "But to business. You have seen better days."

The poor widow cast a piteous glance at the bare walls and rickety furniture of her humble dwelling.

“You have been a housekeeper many years in this parish," continued the stranger, "and have been accustomed all your days to a plum-pudding at Christmas; and you cannot bear to go without it hush! not a word! - I know it all by sympathy. I like myself to keep up old customs better, most of them, than the new ones."

They are, indeed," said the widow, shaking her head. "But if it is not a liberty, may I ask, sir, if you belong to any Society yourself?

do

“In one sense, I

Why, yes, ma'am," said the stranger. namely, the Universal Society of Human Nature. But if you mean such as the District Visitation, I do not. I tread

in their steps, it is true, but it is to do what they leave undone. Their ambulators serve me for pointers to find my birds.”

“And a noble sort of sporting, if ever there was one!" exclaimed the widow, with enthusiasm. “It's a thousand pities more rich people don't take out licenses, and follow the same game."

“It is, indeed, a thousand pities, ma'am," said the stranger; “and a thousand shames to boot. In this motley world of ours, some people have their happiness cut thick, and buttered on both sides; and some have it thin, and no butter at all. As one of the former class, it's my duty to bestow some of my greasy superfluity on my poorer fellow-creatnres. But what are all those heterogeneous articles on the table, neither eatables nor drinkables have you been visited, ma'am, by half a dozen Societies?"

The widow, with the help of her family, related their adventures in search of a pudding, at the end of which the stranger laughed so long and immoderately, and choked, and got so black in the face, that the children shrieked in chorus for fear he should go to heaven before his time. But readymade angel as he was, heaven spared him a little longer by letting him come to; at which, however, instead of seeming overjoyed, he looked very grave, and shook his head, till the widow feared he had "bust a vessel."

"Too bad,” he said at last, "too bad of me to laugh at such distress. I must make amends on the spot and the best way will be to make you all, if I can, as merry as myself. There, ma'am - and he placed in the widow's hand a purse, through the green meshes of which she perceived the glitter of sovereigns, like gold-fish among weeds. "Properly laid out, that money will purchase all the requisites for a Christmas plum-pudding, and some odd comforts and clothing besides. Hush no words, I guess them all by sympathy! Only a shake of the hand all round, and a kiss from the little one. There! Be good boys and girls! God bless you all! Good by!"

The children watched the exit of the generous stranger till the last bit of him had disappeared, and then, as if "drowned in a dream,” still continued gazing on the door.

"He was a real gentleman!" cried Dick.

"A saint! a saint!" exclaimed Mrs. Peck, "a real saint