appetite, so Velvet thought to get something nice to please her; she stole into the house one day, when nobody saw her, and after some little time, she found her way into the cupboard, where she smelt something very nice, and beheld a new plum-cake. ‘Ah!’ said she, ‘how my sick mother will like a bit of this cake!’ so having made a hearty meal herself off it, she carried away the rest for her mother, not thinking she had done any harm.”

“Ah, mamma, (cried Alfred with tears in his eyes,) how I wish I had not set the trap to catch that good Velvet; she might have had my cake, and welcome, if I had but known what she took it for, how sorry I am! I wish Velvet was alive again, with all my heart.”

“Did not I tell you, Alfred, you would be sorry for killing the nasty brown mouse, before the day was over.”

“Oh! yes, dear mamma, and so I am indeed; I wish you had told me the story before, and then I should not have set the trap.—And so I suppose poor Downy will die, because she has no one to feed her.”

“Well, Alfred, shall I finish my story?

“Yes, if you please, mamma, but you don’t know any more of it, do you?” “Only this, when Downy found Velvet did not return, she died of grief. Thus ended the Life and Adventures of The Field-mouse.”

“Ah, mamma,” cried Alfred, bursting into tears, “what a cruel boy I have been! I have killed both Downy and Velvet—I will never be so cruel again.”

Mrs. Clifford, charmed with the sensibility of her little boy, kissed him most tenderly, saying, “Dry your tears, my sweet Alfred, and resolve not to be so desirous of the death of a little animal again. Though it is very necessary to kill them sometimes, or they would soon destroy all our food and clothes; still when we are forced from necessity to kill any thing, we should do it with as much humanity as we can, and never inflict on them unnecessary pain. I should myself have been forced to set the trap for Velvet, only I did not like to see my little Alfred, merely from revenge, wishing so eagerly for the death of a poor mouse, who did not know it was doing any harm in eating the cake.”

Alfred kissed his mother, and thanked her for her kindness in telling him the story; and wiping his tears away, went into the garden to play till tea was ready.

THE END.

* The above-mentioned circumstance, improbable as it may appear, I myself was witness to in the garden not many paces from the door of the house; when the poor little mouse actually escaped the eyes of a cat and her kitten, who passed within a yard of the spot where it stood, by standing in that motionless manner on the top of a clod of earth, nor was it discovered till it left its station, and though caught by the kitten, yet it finally escaped unhurt to the garden hedge.

Dean and Munday, Printers, Threadneedle-street.