47 



Tomkins had been in the habit of consigning to a little box 

 all the odd shillings and sixpences given him from time to 

 time by strangers to whom he had shown the church and 

 monuments : and though of late hardly pinched, nothing 

 would tempt him to take a penny from this little hoard, which 

 he had set aside as the orphan's portion. 



The casket in which the good sexton kept this precious 

 treasure was suitable to his calling, as well as to the means by 

 which it had been got together. It was a small oaken box 

 made out of the fragments of an old coffin, and rudely carved 

 in imitation of his favourite Tomkins' Tomb. An hour or 

 two before he died, he put this box, with its contents, amount- 

 ing then to eleven pounds three shillings and sixpence, into 

 Tim's hand ; and gave him, with his last blessing, a charge 

 (though this was little needed) to keep in decent order three 

 humble graves, those of his young parents, with that of 

 their old father so soon to be dug beside them ; and, above 

 all, never to neglect the ancient monument of his namesake, 

 Sir Timothy Tomkins. 



Though the orphan boy felt, desolately, that with his last 

 relation and friend he had lost the only home of his solitary 

 heart, he still continued to abide beneath the roof under which 

 he and his grandfather had, as lodgers, occupied a room for 

 many years. The old woman whose miserable cottage they had 

 shared was still glad enough to receive from the boy the weekly 

 stipend so long paid by his grandfather, with an addition for 



