to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship was gone!

Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a mere cask had been broken, in running to the spot where they were hauling in. They drew him to my very feetinsensible, dead. He was carried to the nearest house; and, no one preventing me now, I remained near him, busy, while every means of restoration was tried; but he had been beaten to death by the great wave, and his generous heart was stilled forever.

THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH

CHARLES DICKENS

The domestic scene pictured here, with its glowing imaginative coloring and its delightful humor, forms a striking contrast with the tensely dramatic situation portrayed in the preceding lesson.

The Kettle began it! Don't tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. I know better. Mrs. Peerybingle may leave it on record to the end of time that she couldn't say which of them began it; but I say the Kettle did. I ought to know, I hope! The Kettle began it full five minutes, by the little waxy-faced Dutch clock in the corner, before the Cricket uttered a chirp.

Why, I am not naturally positive. Every one knows that. I wouldn't set my own opinion against the opinion of Mrs. Peerybingle, unless I were quite sure, on any account whatever. Nothing should induce me. But this,

is a question of fact. And the fact is, that the Kettle began it, at least five minutes before the Cricket gave any sign of being in existence. Contradict me, and I'll say ten.

Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should have proceeded to do so in my very first word, but for this plain consideration,-if I am to tell a story I must begin at the beginning; and how is it possible to begin at the beginning without beginning at the Kettle?

It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or trial of skill, you must understand, between the Kettle and the Cricket. And this is what led to it, and how it came about.

Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twilight, and clicking over the wet stones in a pair of pattens* that worked innumerable rough impressions of the first proposition in Euclid all about the yard,-Mrs. Peerybingle filled the Kettle at the water butt. Presently returning, less the pattens (and a good deal less, for they were tall and Mrs. Peerybingle was but short), she set the Kettle on the fire.

In doing which she lost her temper, or mislaid it for an instant; for the water-being uncomfortably cold, and in that slippy, slushy, sleety sort of state wherein it seems to penetrate through every kind of substance, patten rings included-had laid hold of Mrs. Peerybingle's toes, and even splashed her stockings.

Besides, the Kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It

*Patten, a kind of overshoe with a sole of wood supported by an iron ring.

wouldn't allow itself to be adjusted on the top bar; it wouldn't hear of accommodating itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it would lean forward with a drunken air, and dribble, a very Idiot of a Kettle, on the hearth. It was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered morosely at the fire.

To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. Peerybingle's fingers, first of all turned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious pertinacity deserving of a better cause, dived sideways in-down to the very bottom of the Kettle. And the hull of the Royal George has never made half the monstrous resistance to coming out of the water, which the lid of that Kettle employed against Mrs. Peerybingle before she got it up again.

It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even then; carrying its handle with an air of defiance, and cocking its spout pertly and mockingly at Mrs. Peerybingle, as if it said, "I won't boil. Nothing shall induce me!"

But Mrs. Peerybingle, with restored good humor, dusted her chubby little hands against each other, and sat down before the Kettle, laughing. Meantime, the jolly blaze uprose and fell, flashing and gleaming on the little Haymaker at the top of the Dutch clock.

Now it was, you observe, that the Kettle began to spend the evening. Now it was, that the Kettle, growing mellow and musical, began to have irrepressible gurglings in its throat, and to indulge in short vocal snorts, which it checked in the bud, as if it hadn't quite made up its mind yet to be good company. Now it was, that, after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial

sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cozy and hilarious, as never maudlin nightingale yet formed the least idea of.

That this song of the Kettle's was a song of invitation and welcome to somebody out of doors,-to somebody at that moment coming on, towards the snug, small home, and the crisp fire, there is no doubt whatever. Mrs. Peerybingle knew it, perfectly, as she sat musing before the hearth.

It's a dark night, sang the Kettle, and the rotten leaves are lying by the way; and above, all is mist and darkness, and below, all is mire and clay; and there's only one relief in all the sad and murky air; and I don't know that it is one, for it's nothing but a glare of deep and angry crimson, where the sun and wind together set a brand upon the clouds for being guilty of such weather; and the widest open country is a long, dull streak of black; and there's hoar-frost on the fingerpost, and thaw upon the track; and the ice it isn't water, and the water isn't free; and you couldn't say that any thing is what it ought to be; but he's coming, coming, coming!—

And here, if you like, the Cricket DID chime in! with a chirrup, chirrup, chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus,—with a voice so astoundingly disproportionate to its size as compared with the Kettle (size! you couldn't see it!)—that if it had then and there burst itself like an overcharged gun, if it had fallen a victim on the spot, and chirruped its little body into fifty pieces, it would have seemed a natural and inevitable consequence, for which it had expressly labored.

They went very well together, the Cricket and the Kettle. The burden of the song was still the same; and louder, louder, louder still, they sang it in their emulation. There was all the excitement of a race about it. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket a mile ahead. Hum, hum, hum-m-m! Kettle making play in the distance, like a great top. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket round the corner. Hum, hum, hum-m-m! Kettle sticking to him; no idea of giving in.

Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, hum, hum-m-m! Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket going in to finish him. Hum, hum,

hum-m-m! Kettle not to be finished. Until, at last, they got so jumbled together, in the hurry-skurry, helterskelter of the match, that whether the Kettle chirped and the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the Kettle hummed, or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than yours or mine to decide with anything like certainty.

But of this there is no doubt; that the Kettle and the Cricket, at one and the same moment, and by some power of amalgamation best known to themselves, sent each his fireside song of comfort streaming into a ray of the candle that shone out through the window, and a long way down the lane. And this light, bursting on a certain person who, on the instant, approached towards it through the gloom, expressed the whole thing to him, literally in a twinkling, and cried, "Welcome home, old fellow! Welcome home, my boy!"