They found some blackberries, and stained their lips eating them. At last night came, and they sat down and cried themselves to sleep. When day dawned again they resumed their wandering, but they could not find their way out of the wood, nor were they any more successful in the days that followed, and as they could not live on blackberries, they died. There was no one to bury the pretty babes; but Robin Redbreast saw them lying in the woodland, and he covered them with leaves.
Meanwhile the wicked uncle supposed they had been killed according to his orders, and he let it be understood that they had died in London of the smallpox. He took their fortune to himself, and thought he had provided amply for his comfort and pleasure to the end of his days. But instead of happiness he experienced only misfortune. He had no peace of mind, because he had an evil conscience, and his thoughts dwelt on the death of the babes. Moreover, his barns burned, his harvests failed, his cattle died in the field, and his two sons, who had gone on a voyage to Portugal, were wrecked and drowned. In the end he was brought to want and misery. He pawned his jewels and mortgaged his land, and he was thrown into jail for debt, and there died.
About that time the ruffian who had left the children in the wood was captured, after committing some crime, and was sentenced to be hanged. When he knew that he must die, he sent for the keeper of the prison, where he had been shut up, and confessed all the wicked deeds he had done. Among other things he told of the two babes he and his companion had been hired to kill, and thus their sad fate was made known.
ALEXANDER JONES
“JEAN, move a wee bit east,” requested the town clerk as he sat at one end of the high-backed bench before his fire on a chilly autumn evening. “You’re taking too much room. You have more than your share of the seat.”
But Jean, his wife, had just got her knitting into a tangle, and was not in the best of humor. So she declined to move an inch, or to attend to what her husband was saying.
“Jean,” said he again, “move a wee bit east. It’s not right to sit so selfish. I’m at the very end of the bench, and here you are with your elbows digging into me. Sit a bit east, do you hear?” And when she did not respond, the town clerk gave his wife a rude shove.
“What do you mean by pushing me like that?” she demanded; “and what do you mean by east? There’s no such thing as east, and I can prove it.”
“No such thing as east!” shouted the town clerk. “Will you not believe the sun?”