"According to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regenera- ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN AUSTRALIA. LONDON: FRANCIS & JOHN RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD, AND WATERLOO PLACE; 1846. 1629. PREFATORY NOTICE. In republishing these Tales, it has been thought better to retain the allusions to circumstances of a local character, as in no way interfering with the principles which it has been the writer's chief endeavour to inculcate. CHAPTER I. THOMAS and Anne Thompson were among those who determined to leave England for New South Wales. They had been married eight years; their family was increasing, and labour becoming scarcer and scarcer. They heard of other families emigrating, and that they easily got high wages, and lived in plenty : so they thought with their four children they would do so also. They were both honest, hard-working, and strong people; and Anne had been well brought up by a careful and pious mother, who had lived many years as servant in the squire's family. Anne was her only child, and she had been able to keep her at school, and, what is of far more consequence, she had set her a good example. Old Nurse Gordon, as she was still called, was well provided for by her former master's family, and though it was near breaking her heart when she heard of their plans to emigrate, she could not find any reason against it. She laid down her spectacles on the old Bible from which she had been reading, and, wiping away the tear from her eye with the corner of her white apron, she patted her little grandchild's head and answered, “Well, Anne, dear, I'm not learned enough to gainsay you, maybe 'tis just as you and Tom say; but, if it was God's will, I should have wished to have you close my old eyes and see me laid in the grave-but His will be done!" "Ay, mother, that's the way to look on it," said Tom; "cheer up, and we'll save you a little something in that fine country, which will go to make you more comfortable." |