youngest had enlisted as a soldier, in hopes of prospering like his brother. The gentleman desiring to know what was become of the second, he wiped his eyes, and owned he had taken upon him his old father's debts, for which he was now in the prison hard by.

The traveller made three quick steps towards the jail; then turning short, "Tell me," said he, "has that unnatural captain sent you nothing to relieve your distresses!" "Call him not unnatural," replied the other, "God's blessing be upon him! He sent me a great deal of money, but I made a bad use of it; I lost it for being security for a gentleman that was my landlord, and was stripped of all I had in the world. besides." At that instant, a young man, thrusting out his head and neck between two iron bars in the prison-window, exclaimed, "Father! father! if my brother William is in life, that's he!" "I am! I am!" cried the stranger, clasping the old man in his arms, and shedding a flood of tears; "I am your son Willy, sure enough!" Before the father, who was quite confounded, could make any return to this tenderness, a decent old woman, bolting out from the door of a poor habitation, cried, "Where is my bairn? where is my dear Willy?" The captain no sooner beheld her than he quitted his father, and ran into her embrace.

"You run about, my little maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the churchyard laid,
Then ye are only five."

"Their graves are green, they may be seen," The little maid replied;

"Twelve steps or more from mother's door, And they are side by side.

"My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit-
I sit and sing to them.

"And often after sunset, sir,
When it is light and fair,

I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.

"The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away;

So in the churchyard she was laid;
And when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we play'd,
My brother John and I. ̧

"And when the ground was white with snow, And I could run and slide,

My brother John was forced to go,

And he lies by her side."

"How many are you, then,” said I, If they two are in heaven ?" Quick was the little maid's reply, "O master! we are seven.”

"But they are dead; these two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
'Twas throwing words away: for still
The little maid would have her will,

And said, “Nay, we are seven!"