Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. THE OPEN CAGE. It was after many weary weeks of suffering that ' little Sam'l' was brought back, a hopeless cripple, to his father's house at Heatherlow. The skill of doctors at the great infirmary had been in vain : the spine was injured, and the lower part of the child's body paralyzed. Besides this, the boy was forced to wear what the neighbours called ' irons'—a network of steel that clasped his frail frame and yielded artificial support. He was subject, too, to sudden relapses, when the heart would beat low and the drawn face take a more deathly pallor. Of these, the doctors warned Elijah and his wife, for in one of them, they said, the boy might die. Poor lad! he was a hideous wreck—a parody of the once beautiful child, whose light had brightened the old home. But he lived, and, as his father used to say, ' if he wor nobbud theer to look at, it wor summat.' And yet Elijah dared not let his eyes rest too long on the little cripple, nor dare he look too long on children perfect in limb, lest pangs of resentment plagued him. Elijah's religion had also suffered shock, and now he seldom found his way to the chapel on the hill. The truth was— his faith had fallen with the fall of his child. There were some who said he was an infidel. This was idle talk, however, for no infidelity could hold up its head in the atmosphere where little Sam'l lived. True, the boy would never be a preacher now—that is, as the gaping world counts preaching ; yet all through the day his quaint talk and quiet contentment were eloquent as the speech of heaven; and told their tale on thehearts of many of the gossipers at ' the Sign or' the Wooden Shoon.' One day Owd Tic-tak came into the shop with a cage, a smile broadening his wrinkled face, and saying : ' Sithee, Sam'l, aw've brought t...