One summer evening, a girl, barefoot and clad in a ragged frock, might have been seen in a deep wood, gathering fuel. She was scarcely ten years old, yet for a long time had been sent out by her parents, day after day, to seek, as now, dry sticks, or, if it was spring-time, rampions and wild hops, or, if it were summer, strawberries and hillberries, and to offer these for sale from house to house.
When she had nothing to sell, she had to go about begging. Without bringing something she dared not return home, if she wished to escape a scolding, or even being beaten; for her parents were poor, and her father a moody and passionate man.
It had not always been so; but since unproductive times and repeated recurrence of sickness in his family had prevented him from advancing, as he had hoped, in his trade--he was a shoemaker--he had, under a godless dejection, given himself up to drinking, thereby scaring away his last customers, and completing his domestic misery.
The mother, a capital wife, as one would say, but as little acquainted with God and His Word as her husband, was thenceforth compelled to bear singly the burden of supporting her family, and was accustomed to go out and earn money by washing. For more than a year the sorely-smitten family had been deprived even of this scanty means of subsistence, the poor woman's uninterrupted exertions by day and by night having brought on a severe illness, and laid her paralytic--lame, hand and foot--in bed, surrounded by her raging husband, and the three half-naked and starving children.
The eldest of the children was Mary, our wood-gatherer.
The little girl, as she is to be met to-day deep in the wood, has collected a pretty large bundle of dry branches, but is weary from her long wandering about the bushes, and lays herself down to rest on the moss-grown roots of a tall, shady beech-tree.
And while she sits, it is as if the birds in the wood all found an inward compassion with the poor child, and would, as far as lay in their power, encourage, comfort, and cheer her.
Our little Mary thought within herself that she had never heard the feathered songsters sing so sweetly as they were now doing in choirs on the green twigs around her.
And it was indeed delightful to listen how the finch warbled here in short, fresh lay, and the titmouse and sisken there sounded their tender notes; and how, from the copse threaded by the brook, arose the long-breathed farewell song of the nightingale; and, from the far distance, the full melancholy trill of the blackbird floated touchingly over.
The cuckoo, also, and the turtle-dove, gave their contribution to the general concert; the ravens, also, in the neighbouring oak, to whom the song is denied, appeared desirous of contributing their share to the entertainment of the little maid, and fed their young before her eyes, and the young ones stretched their necks out of the high nest, and opened wide their bills. The squirrels frisked about, now here, now there, and leaped from tree to tree; and many of the birds came close to Mary's feet, and picked up worms, or a feather, or flock of moss, and flew away with it to their nests.