"Oh, James!" she cried, "we have suffered much! we have been poor, but honest, and the Almighty has looked upon us at last!" Then they began to reproach themselves.
"Oh, James! I have been a peevish woman--an ill wife to you, this many years!" "No, no!" cried Triplet, with tears in his eyes.

"It is I who have been rough and brutal.

Poverty tried us too hard; but we were not like the rest of them--we were always faithful to the altar.

And the Almighty has seen us, though we often doubted it." "I never doubted that, James." So then the poor things fell on their knees upon the public road, and thanked God.

If any man had seen them, he would have said they were mad.
Yet madder things are done every day by gentlemen with faces as grave as the parish bull's.