THE LIVE AND DEAD OFFICE. 581 



broad bold brow, the surface was torn and tossed up into wild irregu- 

 lar ridges- it looked like a rugged bit of rock. She was blind. 



Close by her side stood a short, fair, blue eyed woman, about thirty 

 years of age, full of excitement and activity, but nervous, emaciated, 

 and bearing on her cheek the hectic banner of death. 



Her pale, slender hands, gave palpable evidence, that she had long 

 ceased to take a part in any of those manual labours in which women 

 of her humble situation are usually occupied. Judging from her wed- 

 ding-ring she had been plump, for it was so much too large, that she 

 had taken the precaution of tying it to her slim finger by a bit of silk. 



The third was a tall, well-formed girl, ten or twelve years of age : 

 no two individuals could resemble each other less than the old blind 

 woman, and the other female they were evidently not of the same 

 family ; but this girl by her lineaments had affinities with both. In 

 her countenance, the most striking peculiarities of feature, displayed 

 by her companions, were agreeably united.The conviction flashed on 

 me at a glance, that she was the daughter of the poor nervous, con- 

 sumptive creature, and that the old woman was her grandmother 

 genealogically speaking, on the male side : nor, as I soon found, 

 did I err. 



The grandmother was placid and resigned but garrulous. Her 

 present humility contrasted strongly with the records of former turbu- 

 lence graven on her brow ; age, poverty, and blindness had toned 

 down her temper perhaps. Without the least touch of querulousness, 

 she told an asthmatic old man, with whom she was conversing that 

 up to the age of fifty, she had neither been poor nor blind ; at a little 

 before that period of her life, she had been left a widow, with one son. 

 Reuben, against her will, had married little Peggy Lorimer ; violent 

 dissension ensued, and her son had recklessly enlisted. A few months 

 after his embarkation for a pestilential colony, Peggy became a mo- 

 ther ; the little farm, the paternal inheritance of which Reuben was 

 the prop, soon went to ruin ; and when blind, and almost a pauper,the 

 old woman, to use her own phrase, had gone and laid her head in 

 Peggy's lap. Peggy, she scarcely knew how, had contrived to sup- 

 port her, for many years past. The poor thing, never having received 

 but one short hurried letter from Reuben since his rash action of 

 enlisting, was pining to know what had become of him. All inqui- 

 ries had proved fruitless, and the three generations, mother, wife and 

 daughter comprising all who claimed kith or kin with the soldier, 

 had travelled on foot from Dorsetshire, to ascertain personally, at the 

 Live and Dead Office, what had become of him. 



Raw puffs of wind tossed about the old woman's white locks, a 

 drizzling rain moistened her cheeks, and every individual composing 

 the unsheltered group at the office door except Reuben's feverish 

 wife, were shivering with cold. From within, the flashes of a glowing 

 fire blazed through the window. One clerk was still picking his 

 teeth, and the other paring his nails ; the Horse Guards had not yet 

 struck, and the doors were consequently still closed. 



At length the clock began to tell us it was ten. Reuben's wife 

 looked as though she thought the bell dreadfully tardy : when nine 

 blows of the hammer were heard she turned pale, and exclaimed in 



