one of deeper sadness, when anything occurred which might be
supposed to remind him of his dead wife. But, in this abstraction
from all outward things, his worldly affairs went ever lower
down. He paid money away, or received it, as if it had been so
much water; the gold mines of Potosi could not have touched the
deep grief of his soul; but God in in His mercy knew the sure
balm, and sent the Beautiful Messenger to take the weary one
home.

After his death, the creditors were the chief people who appeared
to take any interest in the affairs; and it seemed strange to
Ruth to see people, whom she scarcely knew, examining and
touching all that she had been accustomed to consider as precious
and sacred. Her father had made his will at her birth. With the
pride of newly and late-acquired paternity, he had considered the
office of guardian to his little darling as one which would have
been an additional honour to the lord-lieutenant of the county;
but as he had not the pleasure of his lordship's acquaintance, he
selected the person of most consequence amongst those whom he did
know; not any very ambitious appointment in those days of
comparative prosperity; but certainly the flourishing maltster of
Skelton was a little surprised, when, fifteen years later, he
learnt that he was executor to a will bequeathing many vanished
hundreds of pounds, and guardian to a young girl whom he could
not remember ever to have seen.

He was a sensible, hard-headed man of the world; having a very
fair proportion of conscience as consciences go; indeed, perhaps
more than many people; for he had some ideas of duty extending to
the circle beyond his own family, and did not, as some would have