"I'll tell you the truth; you'll not be ashamed of it, though your fine cousins would. Poor Uncle George has been so ill this spring that he has not been able to get his allotment dug or planted, and you know the allotment-ground is his chief dependence. The children would be half starved without the vegetables, and the refuse keeps the pig. So father and mother are going to give him a day's labour to get in the potatoes, and I'm going to help. That's my holiday, and a very happy one it will be. Uncle George was always so good to me, and so was aunt, and I love the children dearly. You'll see what a day's work I shall do." "Dear good Phoebe! I wish I could help too; only I have promised to make one of the eleven, and I can't desert them just at last. But I'll tell you what I can do. Your little cousin George, who lives with us, I can let him go home and help." Another bright smile repaid the kindness. But this ploughing-match, Maurice! that will be a pretty sight too! and you, who can do every thing better than the other lads of the parish, why should not you be as proud of being the best ploughman as the best cricketer or the best shot? Nay, but you must listen to me, Maurice: whatever the purse-proud uncle or the fine cousins may say, I have good cause to believe that your trying for the prize would please one person besides myself your own good landlord, Colonel Lisle." Maurice's brow darkened. He drew up his person to his full stature, and spoke angrily and bitterly: "My own good landlord! Would you believe, Phœbe, that after living upon his estate, I and my fathers, these hundred years and more, paying his rent to a day, and doing as much justice to his land as if it were really our own, this good landlord of ours, the lease being upon the point of expiring, has sent us notice to quit!" He turned away in proud and angry sorrow. "Notice! but has any one taken the farm ?" inquired Phœbe. "Not yet, I fancy; but he will find no difficulty in letting it. The lands lie close to my uncle's, and I have sometimes thought at all events we have notice." "But for what reason?" "Oh! your rich landlord can easily find a reason for ridding himself of a poor tenant. The message was civil enough as regarded mother. If she had wished to remain in the farm, he would have had no objection; but, as her request was that the lease might be renewed in my favour, he could not comply. I was unfit for a farmer, he said; never in my business, always shooting, or coursing, or cricketing; never at home; never attending to the main chance; unthrifty in every thing; and about, he heard"-and then, suddenly, Maurice Elliott checked himself, and paused. thing, when you might have married your cousin Harriet with more money than I know how to reckon. Oh! Maurice! Maurice! little did I think when your own dear mother gave her consent, because I was active and industrious and an honest man's daughter, and because the son she loved so well loved me, little did I think that she would be turned from her home for that great goodness. But it must not be, dear Maurice! We must part! We must not marry, to have your mother turned out of doors; neither of us would be happy so. I can speak to my mistress-she is so very kind-and go to live with her friends a great way off. And you will give up coursing and shooting (you know you had promised me to do that,) and then, when Colonel Lisle finds that your heart is in your business, all will go right again, and you will stay at the Linden Farm, and we shall be happy."-And by way of earnest of this coming felicity, poor Phoebe burst into a violent fit of sobbing. Maurice exhausted himself in protestations to do him justice, most sincere-of love, everlasting love, to Phoebe, and hatred, equally durable and equally sincere, towards uncle, cousin, landlord, and, in short, all who sought to separate him from his beloved; assuring her that Colonel Lisle's whole estate would not bribe him to renounce his engagement; that, go where she might, he would follow and that, so far from desiring to continue at their old home, nothing would induce him to remain the tenant of a landlord so unjust and despotic, one who had condemned, without hearing, the descendant of a race who had lived under his father and his father's fathers-ay, even from the planting of the great lime-trees which gave their name to the farm. But if Maurice was vehement, Phoebe, whose hysterical sobbing had ended in quiet and relieving tears, continued gently firm. "You would not make me wretched, Maurice; I know that you would not; and how could I be otherwise if I were to cause your ruin? I shall go into Kent, to Mrs. Holden's sister, and Colonel Lisle will think better than to dismiss the son of his old tenant. Go to him, dear Maurice! Speak to him yourself! Explain-" "Go to him, indeed! speak to him! Explain! I can tell you, Phoebe, that he must come to me if he wishes me to stay upon his land. There are other farms in the county beside his. We are no bond-slaves, blessed be God! in merry England. But don't you go, Phœbe! Stay and let me tell you of my plans; or, if you must go, promise at least to see me, and to give me a full hearing, before you leave Hilton. Promise me this. Stay at least till this ploughing-match is over. That will be a holiday far and near. See me then, and I will let this dear hand go." And Phœbe, blushing, sighing, and protest"About to marry a poor girl without a far-ing against a meeting which would only be a renewal of pain, did, however, give the required promise; and the lovers parted-she for her in-door duties, he for the home he was so soon to relinquish. scribes his five shillings claims "a voice potential, as double as the duke's," who lays down his twenty pounds, (and that the facts are little exaggerated, will be readily admitted by most who have been behind the scenes in such societies,) so let me proudly say the illhumour having once found a vent, works itself clear, and the rough burly disputants come round again, shake hands, and hear reason, with a readiness and facility just as characteristic of our national manners, where a squabble once over is over for ever, and a quarrel fairly reconciled only leaves the opponents faster friends than before. Accordingly, by the time the appointed day arrived, all was peace and amity, and joyous bustle, and the scene took its usual cordial and hearty character of a meeting calculated to advance the interests and promote the happiness of all classes. They who witness those pretty rural festivals, with all their picturesque accessaries of tent and marquée, banners and bands, gay and happy crowds, shaded by noble trees and lighted by bright sunshine, and fanned by the sweet airs of the fairest of the seasons; or they who read the elaborate account of the day's proceedings in the county newspapers, where all is chronicled en couleur de rose, from the earliest procession to the latest cheer, little guess the trouble, and turmoil, and tracasseries which this apparently most amicable and peaceful celebration occasions in its district. The ostensible competitors, whose province it is to contend for the prizes, are for the most part, (the winners being satisfied, of course, and the losers soothed and comforted by encouraging speeches and a good dinner,-solid pudding added to empty praise,) as good-humoured and contented as heart can desire; their unlucky patrons and protectors, the Association, in its own proper person, having previously gone through as much fussing and disputing, squab-phen Elliott. There were different versions ling and quarrelling, as would carry a candidate through a county election, or produce a tragedy upon the boards of a theatre royal. One committee-man threatened to resign because he was not a vice-president, and one vice-president did send in his resignation because he was not the president. One very great man (an Earl) applied to to assume that high office, never answered the secretary's letter; and another great man (a Viscount) coquetted, and poohed, and 'pshawed, and finally declined, because the Earl had been written to first. The committee had five meetings to consider of the place where they ought to meet; four to consider of the day of celebration; three of the hour of dinner; and the grand question of in doors or out of doors, marquée or barn, very nearly caused a dissolution of the society; party having run so high that two of the members, after scolding themselves hoarse, arrived at that state of dumb resentment which answers to the white heat of the anvil, and did not speak. They quarrelled about the value of the clothes, about the devices of the banners, about the colours of the cockades,-in short there was nothing which admitted of two opinions about which they did not quarrel; so that the chief dignitaries of the Association, the chairman, treasurer, and secretary, who had endeavoured to add to their several offices that of pacificatorsgeneral, declared that all the ploughmen and all their teams would not work half as hard on the day of trial as they had done during the time of preparation. But this spirit of opposition, for opposition sake, is a little too much the fashion in our free country, where the good yeoman who sub Some weeks had elapsed since the dialogue between the lovers in Farmer Holden's barnyard, and reports were rife in the village of a strange change in the fortunes of the young tenant of the Linden Farm. His father's will, it was said, threw him entirely into the power of his hard-hearted and purse-proud uncle, Ste of the story, and no one spoke as of positive knowledge; but one fact seemed certain, that Maurice's negotiation for a farm of the same extent with that which he now occupied, had been cut short by the intervention of his stern relative, and that he was now seeking to rent a few acres of pasture-land attached to a cottage in the Moors. He and Phoebe had not again met, but, pursuant to her promise, she had not yet left Hilton, and was now dressing for the ploughing-match at her mother's cottage, with a feeling of light-heartedness for which she would have found it difficult to account. Was she could she be conscious that her lover's gaze was fixed upon her through the open door? or was the knowledge that he was no longer the rich, and, to use the country phrase, the somewhat prodigal young farmer, but nearer her own level, brightening her eyes, and glowing in her cheek, with a hope that she had never put into words-a hope unacknowledged even to her own heart? or did she give more credit than she thought she did, to the report of her little cousin George, that he and his master were, after all, to try for the prizes at the ploughing-match? Phoebe knew that Stephen Elliott had said, with his scornful sneer and bitter tone, "Let him try for the suit of clothes - he may want 'em!" and Phoebe knew enough of her lover's temper to feel that this very taunt, uttered to keep him from the scene, was likely to take a different effect upon his high spirit. "At all events," thought she, "I shall see him!" and she dressed herself, in a flutter of spirits with which vanity had little to do, and then sat down quietly to await her father, whom she was to accompany, and to whom the first prize was allotted, as having brought up a large family in credit and respectability, without receiving parochial assistance. The hale old man, in his well-preserved Sunday coat, with his grey hair smoothed down over his honest face, and his pretty daughter hanging upon his arm, as they walked to the ground after the match was over, formed one of the most interesting groups of the day. The scene was really beautiful. Upon an extensive lawn, richly dotted with magnificent trees, and backed by a noble mansion embowered in woods, stood a splendid central marquée, with smaller tents on either side; flags and banners waved around the tents, and crowned the lofty decorated building, arched with lilacs and laburnums, where the gentlemen were to dine; and the large low open cart-house, overhung by a down-hanging elm, prepared for the ploughmen; carriages were driving up in close succession, horses prancing, music playing, and (to borrow the words of the County Chronicle) all the beauty and fashion of the neighbourhood were collected in front of the tents to witness the distribution of the prizes, and, best of all, they who had earned those prizes, the sturdy tillers of the soil, clean, healthy, and happy, their delighted wives and daughters, and the stout yeomen, their masters, triumphing in the success of their labourers. Add to this the lucky accident of a sunny day in the most genial of the seasons, and every advantage of light and shadow, and shifting clouds, and the result will be a scene too wide for the painter, but rich and bright, and joyous as ever inspired a poet in the merry month of May. old peasant; "Add his son-in-law, for such I shall be as soon as the bans can be published, for I have no money now to throw away upon a license. All is settled," continued he in a lower tone to the old man; " Phœbe consented as soon as ever I proved to her that not only my happiness but my prosperity depended upon my marrying such a wife as herselfpooh! as soon as I proved that my happiness depended upon marrying her, for there is not such another in the world; and Joseph Clarkson, finding that I am to have her to manage the dairy, has consented to let me rent his thirty acres down in the Moors, and the little homestead belonging to it. There's a capital garden, and during my spare time, I shall raise vegetables for the Belford market, and mother 'll live with us, and you'll see how happy we shall be!" And happiness danced in the young man's eyes, as again wringing the old labourer's hand, he turned away to join his Phœbe. "Stop!" exclaimed Colonel Lisle, who, irresistibly attracted by the sudden alteration in his tenant's manner and conduct, had been unable to refrain from listening to the conversation. "Stop one moment, Maurice Elliott,' said he, kindly; "and tell me what this means? Joseph Clarkson's land in the Moors! and your mother to live with you there! Why, in leaving the Linden, there will be the stock and the crops, and the farming utensils, enough, whether you retain or dispose of them, to set you up in one of the best farms in the country. All was left, I know, to you and your mother. Surely, you have not, since your father's death, involved yourself in such debt as to render this change of situation necessary?" Phoebe looked only for one figure, and there, dressed like the rest of the competitors, in a white smock-frock, his head decked with "I owe no man a farthing, sir," replied a double cockade, winner not only of the regu- Maurice, with some pride of accent and manlar match, but of a subsequent prize for plough- ner; then catching the kindly glance of his ing with two horses, stood Maurice Elliott, landlord, he continued, mildly and respectfully, and close beside him, her little cousin George," Every thing was left to my mother and mysticking his hat, also doubly cockaded, as high as possible upon his head, and fairly standing on tiptoe, that his honours might be more conspicuous. Near him, so placed as to appear to belong rather to the gentry than to the wealthy yeomen, in which order he was really classed, leaned his uncle Stephen, his accustomed scornful sneer darkened as if by stronger passions. The ceremony and its attendant speeches being over, Colonel Lisle approached Phoebe and her father, now also wearing the decorations of the day and joined by little George, and, patting the boy's cheek, he said graciously to the old man, "Why, you and your nephew are carrying off all our prizes." "Add his son-in-law, if you please, sir," said Maurice Elliott, approaching the group, holding in one hand the hat decked with its blue cockades of success, and shaking hands heartily with the grey-headed and venerable self; but, either by accident or design-I believe-I am sure by accident,-the will is so worded, that although, in case of our continuing at the Linden farm, the stock and property of every sort was to remain for my use, upon paying a small annuity to my mother, yet, if we removed, it appears that the whole is to be sold; the money to be invested in the three per cents., and not to be touched either by her or me, until her death-neither of us receiving any benefit from this sum beyond the yearly payment of her annuity,-which heaven grant may continue for many years!" This is new to me, Maurice, and strange as well as new. Who is the executor?" "Mr. Stephen Elliott, my uncle." to, Maurice; send me a copy of the will." "You are very good, sir," replied Maurice, "They have all been touched, and found base metal." firmly; but with all gratitude for your kindness, I have made up my mind to let the matter rest. Firmly as I believe that my father did not contemplate this state of things-that he never dreamt of our leaving the Linden Farm, it is, nevertheless, so set down; and there is something in contesting the last will of a parent which I cannot endure. Besides, we shall do very well. My mother will have the comforts to which she has been accustomed, if my labour can provide them; and it will be better for me to be a working man. I was getting to like sporting better than farming. Phœbe said so, sir, as well as you. But now all that is out of the question. I can work, as I have proved to her; and, with her for a companion and a reward, I shall be a better and a happier man at the Moors than I should have been at our old house, wel as I love it." "So! This is my return to my native village! This my reception from relatives who owe me so much!" Thus thought, rather than said, a poor-looking man, as he stood leaning over the gate of a newly-cleared wheat-field in the bright, bustling, busy, harvest time. "One,” exclaimed he, as his musings took a tone of passion which broke unconsciously into words; "One-yonder portly landlady, forsooth, sitting in her bar, as she is pleased to call it her bar, quotha! In my young days it was the little boarded parlour opening from the tap-room. A bar in the old Red Lion! What shall we hear of next? One, bedecked and bedizened, with her gown like a rainbow, her fringed apron, and her cap stuck out with flowers, sitting in her bar, if that be¦ its style and title, amongst her glasses and "Better and happier, perhaps, than you might punch-bowls, with a bell upon her table and a have been, had this not occurred," replied net of lemons dangling above her head; she, Colonel Lisle, grasping his young tenant's Miss Collins as she calls herself-she used to hand with a pressure full of heart; "but not answer to the name of Jenny Collins, twenty better or happier than you will be there now. years agone-refused point-blank to acknowThe new lease shall be made out to-morrow. ledge me! denied to my face that she had ever Your uncle, for views of his own, and in re- seen me! called me a cheat and an impostor! venge for your refusal of his daughter, repre- wondered at my impudence in attempting to sented you to me as dissipated, idle, extrava- pass myself for her dear uncle, Michael Norgant, and careless of all except the caprice of ris! threatened me with the stocks and the the hour. He even contrived to turn your love round-house, the justice and the jail! Prefor Phœbe into a proof of the lowness of your cious minx! She whom I rescued from drudmind and degradation of your habits. Under gery and starvation, from living half shop-wothis view, I sent the notice, fully intending, man, half-maid, with the stingy, termagant however, especially after I found that he clear-starcher, in Belford Marsh! whom I set wanted the farm, to examine more closely into up in that very Red Lion!-perched upon her the facts. I ought to have looked into the throne, the arm-chair, in the bar!-purchased matter at once; but I can hardly regret not the lease, the furniture, the good-will! paid having done so, since the experiment has not her first year's rent! stocked her cellars! only made your character better known to me, clapped a hundred pound bank-note into her but to yourself. And now you must introduce hand! And now that I come home, old and me to Phoebe! There she stands, looking at lame, sick and ragged, she reviles me as a us;-no! now that she sees that we are look-vagabond and an impostor, and tells me to be ing at her, she turns away blushing. But that is Phœbe! I should know the fresh, innocent smile among a thousand." And, as a lover of all justice-even that shadowy justice, called poetical, which is the branch over which we poor authors have most control-I must add, that whilst Phoebe's smiles grew sweeter and sweeter, as her blushes deepened, Stephen Elliott, the rich and purse-proud uncle, who had crept stealthily within hearing of the conversation, and felt himself detected and defeated, slunk away, thankful to her compassion and tender-heartedness that she does not send for the constable to carry me to jail! Liar that she is! base, ungrateful, perjured liar! for she knew me. I say that she knew me; ay, as well as I knew her. She would be glad to be no more altered in the years that have changed her from a slim girl of twenty-five to a bloated woman of fiveand-forty, than I, in those same years, with all my griefs! "Then her brother-faugh! it maddens one to think of their baseness!-her brother, whom Ieducated and apprenticed, finding him money | lately dead, after a series of undeserved misafterwards to put him into partnership with old fortunes and a long and wasting illness; and Jones, the thriving linen-draper. He, indeed, she, working as hard as ever woman did work, did not pretend to deny that I might be his to keep herself and her family out of the workuncle!-but, grant that I were, what claim had house-that Union to whose comforts my preI upon his charity more than any other starv-cious cousin Anthony so tenderly consigns ine. ing wretch? What was I to him? He pi- Poor things! They may well deny any knowtied me, Heaven knew! but what could I ledge of me! for they never saw me; and I expect from him? Oh, the smooth-speaking, have had a good sample of the slight impressoft-spoken knave! with his pity and his cha- sion that benefits conferred leave behind them! rity! Hypocrite in look and word! His tone William was only eighteen when I left Engwas as gentle as if he had been bidding me land and returned to Jamaica after my last welcome to bed and board for my whole life visit. A fine, frank-hearted lad he was! I long. What a fawning parasite that would remember wishing to take him with me. But have been now, if I had accosted him like a my poor sister would not part with him. She rich man! Well! there is some virtue in had married again after the death of her first these rags, since they teach false tongues to husband, William's father, and a wretched speak truth. Then came my cousin Anthony, match she made; for this second husband whose daughter I portioned, whose runaway proved to be an habitual drunkard, always son I clothed and sent to sea. And this An- half-mad when intoxicated, who broke out at thony is now a great meal man-a rich miser last into desperate frenzy, and, but for my inwho could buy up half the country. What terposition, would have murdered the poor boy. said he? Why, he was poor himself- the I seem to see the struggle now," thought the scoundrel!-nobody knew how poor, and had old man, closing his eyes; "he flinging himbeen forced to make a rule to give nothing to self upon William with a table-knife, and I beggars; ay, he called me a beggar! I might rushing between them just soon enough to rego to the Union, he said, that was the fittest ceive the blade in my arm.. I bear the mark place for me. To the Union! the workhouse! of the wound still. The madman was sent to Oh, the precious rascal! The son of my fa- an asylum, and there soon died. And my ther's brother, brought up in my father's house, poor sister, well off for her station, could not -worth a hundred thousand pounds, and would part with this only son. He was a fine lad, have sent me to the workhouse-me, his only was William, spirited and generous; and when living kinsman! Oh, this world! this world! she also died, he was already attached to the this world! Then-for I was resolved to try girl whom he afterwards married. I helped them all I sought out my old school-fellow, them too, for I loved the boy; I helped on that Nicholas Hume, the spendthrift, whom I match, for it was one of sincere affection, and bailed in my young days, when little richer they were in the way to earn a handsome comthan himself, and saved from prison by paying petence; there must have been some impruhis debts. What was his gratitude? Why, dence or great ill luck, to have reduced them he, forsooth, had never heard my name. Mi- to such poverty." So ran the train of the old chael Norris? Who was Michael Norris ? cripple's reverie. "I never suspected it; he Oh, they knew me well enough twenty years never wrote to me, and I engaged in my own ago, when I returned from the West Indies a affairs, and with children then of my own. rich man, husband of a wealthy creole, master Well, I will see them, however; they are in of flourishing plantations, to visit my early this field gleaning. So said their neighbour. haunts, help my poor relations-I found them Yes! This is the field! There they are. all in distress some way or other-and shake I'll see them," thought Michael Norris, hands with my old friends. Nobody had for- "though it is probable that they too will know gotten me then. But now that I come back a nothing of me." And, opening the gate, the ragged cripple, houseless and friendless- -" old man limped slowly across the furrows, and And the old man paused and lifted his wretch-began gathering the scattered ears of corn in ed hat from his thin grey hairs, and passed his his withered hand. tattered handkerchief over his furrowed brow, with an air which proved that he was as much oppressed by mental suffering, by indignation, and disappointment, as by the sultry heat of an August noon. "There are none left now," thought old Michael to himself, as, exhausted by his vehemence, he sank into a milder mood, " none left for me to apply to now, except the three orphan children of my poor nephew, William Leslie, the cousin of these hard-hearted Collinses, and their mother; and they, I fear, are themselves in great want and trouble. He, We have said the field, although, after passing the gate which admitted him between the two high hedges that bounded it on the northern side, the wide expanse from which the wheat had just been carried, assumed the ap-. pearance rather of a large open ridge of arable land, bordered by the high road, and terminated by a distant village, than of the small wooded enclosures so common in the midland counties. A pretty scene it was, as it lay before him, bathed in the sunshine, and a lovely group was that to which his attention was immediately directed. A pale young woman, |