Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 | Page 5

to his belief, had never wronged him of a penny.
* * * * *
'What's this you have put into the gruel, Mary?' said a pale, sickly-looking man one evening, taking something out of his mouth, which he held towards the feeble gleams emitted by a farthing rush-light standing on the mantel-piece.
'What is it, father?' inquired a young girl, approaching him. 'Isn't the gruel good?'
'It's good enough,' replied the man; 'but here's something in it: it's a shilling, I believe.'
'It's a guinea, I declare!' exclaimed the girl, as she took the coin from him and examined it nearer the light.
'A guinea!' repeated the man; 'well, that's the first bit of luck I've had these seven years or more. It never could have come when we wanted it worse. Shew it us here, Mary.'
'But it's not ours, father,' said Mary. 'I paid away the last shilling we had for the meal, and here's the change.'
'God has sent it us, girl! He saw our distress, and he sent it us in His mercy!' said the man, grasping the piece of gold with his thin, bony fingers.
'It must be Mr Benjamin's,' returned she. 'He must have dropped it into the meal-tub that stands by the counter.'
'How do you know that?' inquired the man with an impatient tone and a half-angry glance. 'How can you tell how it came into the gruel? Perhaps it was lying at the bottom of the basin, or at the bottom of the sauce-pan. Most likely it was.'
'O no, father,' said Mary: 'it is long since we had a guinea.'
'A guinea that we knew of; but I've had plenty in my time, and how do you know this is not one we had overlooked?'
'We've wanted a guinea too much to overlook one,' answered she. 'But never mind, father; eat your gruel, and don't think of it: your cheeks are getting quite red with talking so, and you won't be able to sleep when you go to bed.'
'I don't expect to sleep,' said the man peevishly; 'I never do sleep.'
'I think you will, after that nice gruel!' said Mary, throwing her arms round his neck, and tenderly kissing his cheek.
'And a guinea in it to give it a relish too!' returned the father, with a faint smile and an expression of archness, betokening an inner nature very different from the exterior which sorrow and poverty had incrusted on it.
His daughter then proposed that he should go to bed; and having assisted him to undress, and arranged her little household matters, she retired behind a tattered, drab-coloured curtain which shaded her own mattress, and laid herself down to rest.
The apartment in which this little scene occurred, was on the attic storey of a mean house, situated in one of the narrow courts or alleys betwixt the Strand and Drury Lane. The furniture it contained was of the poorest description; the cracked window-panes were coated with dust; and the scanty fire in the grate, although the evening was cold enough to make a large one desirable--all combined to testify to the poverty of the inhabitants. It was a sorry retreat for declining years and sickness, and a sad and cheerless home for the fresh cheek and glad hopes of youth; and all the worse, that neither father nor daughter was 'to the manner born;' for poor John Glegg had, as he said, had plenty of guineas in his time; at least, what should have been plenty, had they been wisely husbanded. But John, to describe the thing as he saw it himself, had always 'had luck against him.' It did not signify what he undertook, his undertakings invariably turned out ill.
He was born in Scotland, and had passed a great portion of his life there; but, unfortunately for him, he had no Scotch blood in his veins, or he might have been blessed with some small modicum of the caution for which that nation is said to be distinguished. His father had been a cooper, and when quite a young man, John had succeeded to a well-established business in Aberdeen. His principal commerce consisted in furnishing the retail-dealers with casks, wherein to pack their dried fish; but partly from good-nature, and partly from indolence, he allowed them to run such long accounts, that they were apt to overlook the debt altogether in their calculations, and to take refuge in bankruptcy when the demand was pressed and the supply of goods withheld--his negligence thus proving, in its results, as injurious to them as to himself. Five hundred pounds embarked in a scheme projected by a too sanguine friend, for establishing a local newspaper, which 'died ere it was born;' and a fire, occurring at a time that John had omitted to renew his insurance, had seriously damaged his resources, when some matter of business