Cree, when he observed them, sat down on his barrow-shafts terrified to approach, and I see them now pointing to the workhouse till he left his barrow on the road and hobbled away, his legs cracking as he ran.
It is strange to know that there was once a time when Cree was young and straight, a callant who wore a flower in his buttonhole, and tried to be a hero for a maiden's sake.
Before Cree settled down as a weaver, he was knife and scissor-grinder for three counties, and Mysy, his mother, accompanied him wherever he went.

Mysy trudged alongside him till her eyes grew dim and her limbs failed her, and then Cree was told that she must be sent to the pauper's home.

After that a pitiable and beautiful sight was to be seen.

Grinder Queery, already a feeble man, would wheel his grindstone along the long high road, leaving Mysy behind.

He took the stone on a few hundred yards, and then, hiding it by the roadside in a ditch or behind a paling, returned for his mother.