[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.