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52 They would think then that it was certain that they need never pay. That is their gratitude.

"Whoever gets her will have a good wife. I often heard that a wife was better than a fortune There is both wife and fortune there.—It would be a queer thing for me to do, to marry, having only ten years now. She would be in a nice way then—and her children, if she had any. Bad manners to it for money and for a purse and for a bargain! I had an easy mind until they came my way."

That is the way he spent the night. He went out at daybreak, and up the hill. He sat for a while on the top of a big rock called the Gamblers' Rock. When the day cleared and the sun rose, and he looked round him at the beautiful view to be seen from the rock, the gloom rose from his heart and a great peace came upon his mind.

—Well, he had a batch of workmen, and they were sitting down to dinner, and there was a big table of potatoes before them, and there was a basin of thick milk in front of each man. The man of the house took his own basin, and the first mouthful he took out of it he laid bare a mouse in it. He beckoned to Kate, and showed her the mouse. That did not put her about in the least. She took the basin in her left hand, and went over to the door. She put her right hand into the basin and lifted the mouse out of it and flung it out at the door; and then she put the