FIRST WORDS It was the spring of 1800.

Old people yet can tell of the hard famine of that year.

The harvest of the autumn before had failed; the war and the corn laws had brought the price of corn up to a famine rate; and much of what came into the market was unsound, and consequently unfit for food, yet hungry creatures bought it eagerly, and tried to cheat disease by mixing the damp, sweet, clammy flour with rice or potato meal.

Rich families denied themselves pastry and all unnecessary and luxurious uses of wheat in any shape; the duty on hair-powder was increased; and all these palliatives were but as drops in the ocean of the great want of the people.
Philip, in spite of himself, recovered and grew stronger; and as he grew stronger hunger took the place of loathing dislike to food.

But his money was all spent; and what was his poor pension of sixpence a day in that terrible year of famine?
Many a summer's night he walked for hours and hours round the house which once was his, which might be his now, with all its homely, blessed comforts, could he but go and assert his right to it.