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MATT got up the next morning, and felt for the first time the difference made in the cottage by the absence of his grandfather. Every change affected his imperfect mind, and made him restless. He was curious to know why his grandfather had not taken his oars and his fishing-tackle with him; and when his aunt told him there was no sea where he was gone, the boy was at first greatly surprised, and then said it must be a very good place, "No sea, no storms!"

"Ay," said his aunt, "no high winds such as frighten Matt in the winter?" So the boy was satisfied for the present, and went out on the beach to wait for his friend, but she did not come; and after a while her absence and that of his grandfather made Matt restless and uneasy.

Becca was sure she would come: the lady had said she would come; and, accordingly, the careful little girl led Matt to the cavern; and then the sight of the grotto and the place where they had sat the day before reminded the poor boy of the conversation held there, and for a while he was contented; but the lady did not come that day, nor for many days; and at last, though Matt went to the cave every day to look for her, he scarcely expected to find her, though always satisfied with little Becca's assurance that she would "be sure to come to-morrow."

At length, wondering at her protracted absence, Mary Goddard walked to the little watering-place where she had been staying; and then the people of the house told her that their lodger was gone. She had been sent for suddenly the same night that the old fisherman was buried. A near relation, living more than fifty miles away was taken extremely ill, likely to die, and he had sent for her. The woman added, when she saw Mary Goddard's look of disappointment, "but she has left what ought to reconcile you to losing her; she is a good friend of the boy's certainly. She told me to give you this the first time I saw you; and if I had not been so busy you should have had it before, for I would have walked over with it." So saying, she put into Mary Goddard's hand a sovereign; and very gratefully was it received: for the expenses of the old fisherman's illness and funeral had pressed heavily on his industrious daughter, and she now hardly knew how she could earn enough money to maintain herself and the boy.

Poor Matt! when his aunt came home she did not conceal from him the truth that he had lost his friend, but told him abruptly that she was gone, and was not coming back any more.

He did not take the news so well as she had expected; for though he said little at the time, he evidently pined and moped after "his lady," and it seemed as if in departing she had taken all the sunshine with her: for no sooner was she gone than the sweet warm days of October gave way to a succession of raw, boisterous weather, when the foam from the rough troubled sea was blown into the cottage-door, and when the gusty winds shook the frail little tenement, waving its ineffectual curtains, blowing its smoke down the chimney, and making it difficult to keep the candle lighted on the table.

Matt could only sit and shiver. His pale hands, cramped with cold, forgot the art that had beguiled so many listless hours; his feeble feet, chilblained and benumbed, could no longer support him to the sands; his mysterious searchings of the heavens took place no more. He sat from day to day asking for "his lady;" sometimes crying with the cold, and sometimes from a sharper evil; for the lonely child was often left with the neighbor's boy, Rob, whom he so much dreaded; and then, when he peevishly cried, he was beaten. But he seldom had sense to tell this to his aunt when she returned, though sometimes he made her wonder at the fervency with which he would repeat, "Matt shall go to God some day, and Matt shall never be beaten any more."

She did not understand half the significance of those words. She was obliged often to go out washing and charing, and during her absence this Rob was most frequently left with Matt; and at her return received a penny for having given him his dinner and taken care of him. Sometimes Becca had this charge instead of Rob, and then the day went cheerily. If the sun shone, Becca would lead him, sadly lame and helpless now, to the cave; and there the two children would talk together on the one subject that Matt could understand; and every day came the never-wearying assurance, that when Matt went to God he should never be cold, and he should never be beaten any more.

And now came a time of great trouble and distress to the inhabitants of the little fishing hamlet. There was very bad weather; the men could not go out with the boats, and unwholesome food, and over-hard work brought the fever, and Becca's mother and poor Mary Goddard both sickened at the same time. The neighbors in the two other cottages did what they could for them; and Rob's mother, a kind-hearted bustling woman, who had many children of her own to attend to, and a sickly, bedridden mother to nurse, constantly come in to keep Mary's fire, and to give her drink and make her bed for her. Many a time did this poor creature spare a crust for the poor idiot boy from her own miserable store; for she had compassion on his helplessness, and could not bear to see his blue lips and trembling limbs, as he sat on his little wooden stool by the small fire, within hearing of his aunt's delirious moaning.