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                              FIRST LOVE.

                                A NOVEL
                           IN THREE VOLUMES.


                                VOL. I.


                                LONDON:
                  SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.

                                 1830.




  LONDON:
  IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY-STREET, STRAND.




All the mottoes annexed to the chapters of this work, have been
selected from the Author's dramatic and other poetical works, not yet
published.




FIRST LOVE.




CHAPTER I.

  "No hut shelters Comala from the rain."


A family of travelling vagrants were overtaken on the high road
just leading out of Keswick, on the Penrith side, by a gentleman
on horseback. He had observed the same group begging during the
entertainments of the regatta which had concluded but the evening
before.

"Ho! ho! my good woman," he said, as he passed in a sling trot, "I am
glad to see your boy has found his second leg!"

The woman, who appeared to be young, and who would have been handsome,
had not dirt and impudence rendered her disgusting, looked behind her,
and perceived that a poor, sickly, ragged child, apparently about five
years old, who followed her, tired of his crutches, which pushed up his
little shoulders almost out of their sockets, had contrived to loosen
the bandage of his tied-up leg, and slip it down out of the dirty linen
bag, in which it usually hung on the double, and from which it was not
always released, even at night, as so doing necessarily incurred the
further trouble of tying it up again in the morning. She laid down her
bundle, and stood still with her arms a-kimbo, till, with hesitating
steps, and looks of suppressed terror, her victim came up; then
glancing round, to ascertain that the gentleman was out of sight, she
seized the child, snatched both the crutches from his trembling hands,
and grasping them in one of hers, she began to flog him without pity.
He seemed used to this, for he uttered no sound of complaint; silent
tears only rolled down his face.

"Ye villain!" said she at last, with a strong Cumberland accent, and
gasping for breath, "it's not the first time, is it? it's not the first
time I've beat you within an inch of your life for this. But I'll
do for you this time: that I will! You shan't be a burden to me any
longer, instead of a profit. If it wasn't for the miserable looks of
ye," she added, shaking him almost to atoms as she wheeled him round,
"that sometimes wrings a penny out of the folk, I'd ha' finished ye
long ago." Then, with her great foot, armed with an iron-rimmed wooden
shoe, she gave him a violent kick on the offending leg, continuing
thus:--"Its best break the shanks on ye at ance, ye whey-faced urchin
ye! and then ye'll tak te yeer crutches without biddin'!"

Finding, however, that though he had staggered and fallen forward on
both hands, he had yet risen again, and still contrived to stand, she
once more lifted her foot, to repeat the kick with increased force: for
she was as much intoxicated by drink as by rage, and really seemed to
intend to break the child's leg; but her husband, a sort of travelling
tinker, coming up at the moment, and uttering a violent curse, struck
her a blow that, poised as she just then was on one foot, brought her
to the ground.

During the scuffle which ensued, the poor little sufferer, who had
occasioned it all, crept through the hedge of a field by the road side,
and hid himself under some bushes. But the woman, soon after pursuing
in search of him, jumped the fence, and dropped among the very brambles
where he lay. She perceived him instantly, and shook her clenched hand,
which so paralysed him, that he did not dare to move, though she for
some time delayed seizing him. Finding that the inside of the hedge
was covered with clothes for bleaching, she thought it best, the first
thing she did, to secure a good bundle of so desirable a booty, and
fling it over to her husband. She was just in the act of so doing,
when the owner of the linen came into the field, and immediately set
up the halloo of "Thieves!