CHAPTER V.

Heavenly Hope.

THE summer flowers came, and withered away; the days grew shorter and shorter. The swallows took their flight to warmer climes; winter was stealing on apace, and yet the lawsuit was not ended on which hung the succession to the Mytton estate!

Amy's feeble spark of life was growing fainter. It was a surprise to herself that she had survived to see the winter, with increasing cares and hardships around her. But the poor sufferer had not been left deserted; help had been sent her in time of need. The clergyman, who came from a considerable distance to visit the sick member of his flock in her lonely dwelling, interested other friends in her case; many a little comfort found its way to the cottage on the common, which Amy gratefully received as a gift from her Father in heaven.

A few days before Christmas, when the wide common looked like an almost unbroken sheet of snow, the rough and little used cart-track across it being entirely hidden from view, little May sat on her low wooden stool at the feet of her sister. The poor child looked thinner and more thoughtful than she had done in the spring, when this story opened. There was no sound of wood-chopping from the shed, which was itself falling into decay.

Mytton had now gone, as he often went, to the nearest public-house to get a sight of the papers, for the tedious suit was apparently at length drawing near to its close. The boys did not care to work unless their father's eye were upon them; they had run off to amuse themselves, no one exactly knew where. They had little to tempt them to stay near the cottage; the last bit of bread that was in it had been finished at breakfast.

"Oh! Amy," sighed poor May, "I wish—I wish we'd never heard of that Mytton estate, that those men in black coats had never come near our cottage, or found these scraps in your pillow! Looking for that inheritance, as father calls it, has been plague and worry to us ever since, and if he don't get it at last, 'twill drive him right out of his wits!"

"I fear that disappointment now would nigh break his heart!" murmured Amy.

"But if he does get it, won't it make him happy, oh! So very, very happy!" cried May.

"I don't know—I hope so; but one can't be quite sure with anything earthly," said Amy.

May looked surprised at the doubt. "I'm sure that it will, if father only gets the inheritance," she cried; "but 'tis so very long a-coming, I'm afraid it will never be his."

"I believe that I shall enter into mine first," said Amy very faintly, and her lips formed the words to which she had hardly strength to give breath, "far better—far better—undefiled and that fadeth not away!"

There was something in the countenance of Amy, sweet and placid as it was, that alarmed May, she could scarcely tell why. The child rose hastily and ran to the door, she felt more anxious than she had ever before been for her father's return.

Scarcely had May opened the door, when Mytton's shadow fell on the threshold; she had not heard his footsteps on the deep snow. The face of Silas was pale with excitement, even his lips were bloodless, and wild eagerness was in his eyes. He clutched in his hand a telegram paper, having met the bearer in the way. May saw at once that great tidings had arrived, but scarcely knew whether Mytton's strange manner betokened the excess of despair or of joy.

She was not long left in doubt!

With the loud exclamation, "I have it!" The inheritor of Mytton strode into the cottage up to the place where Amy was seated.

Perhaps she had heard the exclamation of triumph, for there was a smile on her lips, but it might have been left there by a thought of deeper, sweeter joy than any that his tidings could give. Amy's expectations had been realised, she had entered on her inheritance of life, and peace, and bliss!

Very often in succeeding years did May Mytton think on the doubt expressed by her dying sister as to whether the possession of an estate would make their father happy. It certainly never did so. The chopper of faggots, uneducated, unfitted to mix in the society of those now his equals, proud and shy, afraid of ridicule, and painfully conscious that his rustic manner must expose him to it, was more miserable in his fine old mansion than he had been in his lonely cottage.

The conduct of Joe and David planted his pillow with thorns. They were sent to a fashionable school, where they learned, indeed, much that gentlemen's sons are expected to know, but with it, acquired habits of reckless extravagance and folly. The boys thought themselves far more of gentlemen than their uneducated father could be, and Mytton bitterly felt that they did so. They wasted his money, despised his control, embittered his life by their excesses, and at last disgraced themselves in the sight of the world. To Mytton and his two younger sons, the inheritance so eagerly desired had brought sorrow, disappointment, and shame!

It was not so with May, or with Silas her eldest brother. They never set their hearts upon riches, nor chose their portion here. They made use of the wealth which they inherited as a trust confided to them by their heavenly Master, most enjoyed when most laid out to His glory.

For Amy's short life of suffering had not been spent in vain: the Bible which she had given, the words which she had spoken, had been of far more avail in ennobling the two who loved her best, than all the broad acres of Mytton.

May, amidst many family trials, pursued her course of usefulness in humble faith, cheered by the hope of rejoining her sister, and rejoicing with her for ever, in that bright inheritance above which the Lord hath prepared for them that love Him!

A SAINT

OR,

A CHRISTIAN IN CHARACTER.