ville! Love was a worse disease than the solitude of Kinlay-end.

Without pretending to any remarkable absence of curiosity on the one hand, or pleading guilty to the slightest want of interest in my dear young friend on the other, I was chiefly anxious to escape the honour of being her confidante. So sure as you talk of love, you nourish it; and I wanted hers to die away. Time and absence, and cheerful company, and summer amusements, would, I doubted not, effect a cure; I even began to fancy her spirits were improving, when one morning towards the middle of May, she came to me more hurried and agitated than I had ever seen her. The cause, when disclosed, seemed quite inadequate to produce so much emotion. Mrs. Martin had received a letter from her landlord, informing her that he had lent to a friend the apartments fitted up for himself at the farm, and that his friend would arrive on the succeeding day for a week's angling. "Well, my dear Grace, and what then?" "And this friend is Sir John Gower." "But who is Sir John Gower?" She hesitated a little-"What do you know of him ?"-" Oh, he is the proudest, sternest, cruelest man! It would kill me to see him; it would break my heart, if my heart is not broken already." And then in an inexpressible gush of bitter grief, the tale of love which I had long suspected, burst forth. She had been engaged to the only son of this proud and wealthy baronet, with the full consent of all parties; and on the discovery of her uncle's ruined circumstances, the marriage had been most harshly broken off by his commands. She had never heard from Mr. Gower since they were separated by his father's authority, but in the warmth and confidence of her own passionate and trustful love, she found an assurance of the continuance of his. Never was affection more ardent or more despairing. No common man could have awakened such tenderness in such a woman. I soothed her all I could; and implored her to give us the pleasure of her company during Sir John's stay and so it was settled. He was expected the next evening, and she agreed to come to us some time in the forenoon.

The morning, however, wore away without bringing Miss Neville; dinner-time arrived and passed, and still we heard no tidings of her. At last, just as we were about to send | to Kinlay-end for intelligence, Dick Crosby arrived on his donkey, with a verbal request that I would go to her there. Of course I complied; and as we proceeded on our way, I walked before, he riding behind, but neither of us much out of our usual pace, thanks to my rapid steps, and the grave funereal march of the donkey, I endeavoured to extract as much information as I could from my attendant, a person whom I generally found as communicative as heart could desire.

On this occasion he was most provokingly taciturn. I saw that there was no great calamity to dread, for the boy's whole face was evidently screwed up to conceal a grin, which, in spite of his efforts, broke out every moment in one or other of his features. He was bursting with glee, which for some unknown cause he did not choose to impart; and seemed to have put his tongue under a similar restraint to that which I have read of in some fairy tale, where an enchanter threatens a loquacious waiting-maid with striking her dumb, if, during a certain interval, she utters more than two words,-yes and no. Dick's vocabulary was equally limited. I asked him if Miss Neville was well? "Yes." If he knew what she wanted? "No." If Sir John Gower was arrived? "Yes." If Miss Neville meant to return with me? "No." At last, not able to contain himself any longer, he burst into a shout something between laughing and singing, and forcing the astonished donkey into a pace, which, in that sober beast, might pass for a gallop, rode on before me, followed by the barking sheep-dog, to open the gate; whilst I, not a little curious, walked straight through the house to Miss Neville's sittingroom. I paused a moment at the door, as by some strange counteraction of feeling one often does pause, when strongly interested; and in that moment I caught the sweet notes of La ci darem, sung by a superb manly voice, and accompanied by Grace's piano;-and instantly the truth flashed upon me, that the old Sir John Gower was gathered to his fathers, and that this was the heir and the lover come to woo and to wed. No wonder that Grace forgot her dinner engagement! No wonder that Dick Crosby grinned!

I was not mistaken. As soon as decorum would allow, Sir John carried off his beautiful bride, attended by her faithful adherent, the proudest and happiest of all odd boys! and the wedding was splendid enough to give a fresh impulse to village curiosity, and a new and lasting theme to our village gossips, who first and last could never comprehend Grace Neville.

A NEW MARRIED COUPLE.

THERE is no pleasanter country sound than that of a peal of village bells, as they come vibrating through the air, giving token of marriage and merriment; nor ever was that pleasant sound more welcome than on this still foggy gloomy November morning, when all nature stood as if at pause; the large drops hanging on the thatch without falling; the sere leaves dangling on the trees; the birds mute and motionless on the boughs; turkeys, children, geese, and pigs unnaturally silent;

the whole world quiet and melancholy as ing up customers where a man of less experisome of the enchanted places in the Arabian ence would despair, and so used to utter those tales. That merry peal seemed at once to sounds while marching beside his rumbling break the spell, and to awaken sound, and equipage, that it would not be at all surprislife, and motion. It had a peculiar welcome ing if he were to cry "Cherries — salmon ! too, as stirring up one of the most active salmon pas- cherries!" in his sleep. As to fasions in woman or in man, and rousing the tigue, that is entirely out of the question. rational part of creation from the torpor in- Jacob is a man of iron; a tall, lean, gaunt duced by the season and the weather at the figure, all bone and sinew, constantly clad in thrilling touch of curiosity. Never was a a tight brown jacket with breeches to match, completer puzzle. Nobody in our village had long leather gaiters, and a leather cap; his heard that a wedding was expected; no unac- face and hair tanned by constant exposure to customed conveyance, from a coach to a wheel- the weather into a tint so nearly resembling barrow, had been observed passing up the vi- his vestments, that he looks all of a colour, carage lane; no banns had been published in like the statue ghost in Don Giovanni, alchurch—no marriage of gentility, that is to though the hue be different from that resay, of license, talked of, or thought of; none nowned spectre-Jacob being a brown man. of our village beaux had been seen, as village Perhaps Master Peter in Don Quixote, him beaux are apt to be on such occasions, smirk of the ape and the shamoy doublet, were the ing and fidgety; none of our village belles apter comparison; or, with all reverence be it ashamed and shy. It was the prettiest puzzle spoken, the ape himself. His visage is spare, that had occurred since Grace Neville's time; and lean, and saturnine, enlivened by a slight and, regardless of the weather, half the gos- cast in the dexter eye, and diversified by a sips of the street-in other words, half the partial loss of his teeth, all those on the left inhabitants-gathered together in knots and hand having been knocked out by a cricket clusters, to discuss flirtations and calculate ball, which, aided by the before-mentioned possibilities. obliquity of vision, gives a peculiar one-sided expression to his physiognomy.

Still the bells rang merrily on, and still the pleasant game of guessing continued until the appearance of a well-known but most unsuspected equipage, descending the hill from the church, and showing dimly through the fog the most unequivocal signs of bridal finery, supplied exactly the solution which all riddles ought to have, adding a grand climax of amazement to the previous suspense-the new married couple being precisely the two most unlikely persons to commit matrimony in the whole neighbourhood; the only two whose names had never come in question during the discussion, both bride and bridegroom having been long considered the most confirmed and resolute old maid and old bachelor to be found in the country side.

His tongue is well hung and oily, as suits his vocation. No better man at a bargain than Master Frost: he would persuade you that brill was turbot, and that black cherries were maydukes; and yet, to be an itinerant vender of fish, the rogue hath a conscience. Try to bate him down, and he cheats you without scruple or mercy; but put him on his honour, and he shall deal as fairly with you as the honestest man in Billingsgate. Neither doth he ever impose on children, with whom, in the matter of shrimps, perriwinkles, nuts, apples, and such boyish ware, he hath frequent traffic. He is liberal to the urchins; and I have sometimes been amused to see the Wat Tyler and Robin Hood kind of spirit with which he will fling to some wistful penniless brat, the identical handful of cherries which, at the risk of his character and his customer, he hath cribbed from the scales, when weighing out a long-contested bargain with some clamorous housewife.

Master Jacob Frost is an itinerant chapman, somewhere on the wrong side of sixty, who traverses the counties of Hants, Berks, and Oxon, with a noisy lumbering cart full of panniers, containing the heterogeneous commodities of fruit and fish, driving during the summer a regular and profitable barter be- Also he is an approved judge and devoted tween the coast on one side of us and the lover of country sports; attends all pony cherry country on the other. We who live races, donkey races, wrestling and cricketabout midway between these two extreme matches, an amateur and arbiter of the very points of his peregrination, have the benefit first water. At every revel or Maying within of both kinds of merchandise both going and six miles of his beat, may Master Frost be coming; and there is not a man, woman, or seen, pretending to the world, and doubtless child in the parish, who does not know Mas- to his own conscience (for of all lies those ter Frost's heavy cart and old grey mare half that one tells to that stern monitor are the a mile off, as well as the stentorian cry of most frequent), that he is only there in the "Cherries, crabs, and salmon," sometimes way of business; whilst in reality the cart pickled, and sometimes fresh, with which he and the old white mare, who perfectly undermakes the common and village re-echo; for, stands the affair, may generally be found in with an indefatigable perseverance, he cries happy quietude under some shady hedge;his goods along the whole line of road, pick-whilst a black sheep-dog, his constant and

sort, not only on account of Hester's homebrewed, which is said to be the best ale in the county, but because, in point of fact, that apvery high road of the drovers who come from different points of the west to the great mart, London. Seldom would that green be found without a flock of Welsh sheep, foot-sore and weary, and yet tempted into grazing by the short fine grass dispersed over its surface, or a drove of gaunt Irish pigs sleeping in a corner, or a score of Devonshire cows straggling in all directions, picking the long grass from the surrounding ditches; whilst dog and man, shepherd and drover, might be seen basking in the sun before the porch, or stretched on the settles by the fire, according to the weather and the season.

trusty follower, keeps guard over the panniers, Master Frost himself being seated in full state amidst the thickest of the throng, gravest of umpires, most impartial and learned of re-parently lonely and trackless common is the ferees, utterly oblivious of cart and horse, panniers and sheep-dog. The veriest old woman that ever stood before a stall, or carried a fruit-basket, would beat our shrewd merchant out of the field on such a day as that; he hath not even time to bestow a dole on his usual pensioners, the children. Unprofitable days to him, of a surety, so far as blameless pleasure can be called unprofitable; but it is worth something to a spectator to behold him in his glory, to see the earnest gravity, the solemn importance with which he will ponder the rival claims of two runners tied in sacks, or two grinners through a horse-collar.

Such were the habits, the business, and the The damsel who, assisted by an old Chelamusements of our old acquaintance, Master sea pensioner, minus a leg, and followed by a Frost. Home he had none, nor family, save little stunted red-haired parish girl and a huge the old sheep-dog, and the old grey horse, tabby cat, presided over this flourishing hoswho lived, like himself, on the road; for it telry, was a spinster of some fifty years standwas his frequent boast, that he never entered ing, with a reputation as upright as her person; a house, but ate, drank, and slept in the cart, a woman of slow speech and civil demeanour, his only dwelling-place. Who would ever have neat, prim, precise, and orderly, stiff-starched dreamt of Jacob's marrying! And yet he it is and straight-laced as any maiden gentlewothat has just driven down the vicarage-lane, man within a hundred miles. In her youth | seated in, not walking beside, that rumbling she must have been handsome; even now, conveyance, the mare and the sheep-dog deck- abstract the exceeding primness, the pursed-up ed in white satin favours, already somewhat mouth, and the bolt-upright carriage, and Hessoiled, and wondering at their own finery; ter is far from uncomely, for her complexion himself adorned in a new suit of brown, ex- is delicate, and her features are regular. And actly of the old cut, adding by a smirk and a Hester, besides her comeliness and her good wink to the usual knowingness of his squint- ale, is well to do in the world, has money in ing visage. There he goes, a happy bride- the stocks, some seventy pounds, — a forgroom, perceiving and enjoying the wonder tune in furniture, feather-beds, mattresses, that he has caused, and chuckling over it in tables, presses and chairs of shining walnutlow whispers to his fair bride, whose marriage tree, to say nothing of a store of homespun seems to the puzzled villagers more astonish-linen, and the united wardrobes of three, ing still.

maiden aunts. A wealthy damsel was HesIn one corner of an irregular and solitary ter, and her suitors must probably have exgreen, communicating by intricate and seldom- ceeded in number and boldness those of any trodden lanes with a long chain of commons, lady in the land. Welsh drovers, Scotch pedstands a thatched and white-washed cottage, lars, shepherds from Salisbury Plain, and pigwhose little dove-cot windows, high chim- drivers from Ireland-all these had she resistneys, and honeysuckled porch, stand out pic-ed for five-and-thirty years, determined to live turesquely from a richly-wooded back-ground; and die "in single blessedness," and "leave whilst a magnificent yew-tree, and a clear the world no copy." bright pond on one side of the house, and a clump of horse-chestnuts overhanging some low weather-stained buildings on the other, form altogether an assemblage of objects that would tempt the pencil of a landscape painter, if ever painter could penetrate to a nook so utterly obscure. There is no road across the green, but a well-trodden footpath leads to the door of the dwelling, which the sign of a bell suspended from the yew-tree, and a board over the door announcing "Hester Hewit's Homebrewed Beer," denote to be a small public house.

Every body is surprised to see even the humblest village hostel in such a situation; but the Bell is in reality a house of great re

And she it is whom Jacob has won, from Scotchman and Irishman, pig-dealer and shepherd, she who now sits at his side in sober finery, a demure and blushing bride! Who would ever have thought of Hester's marrying! and when can the wooing have been? And how will they go on together? Will Master Frost still travel the country, or will he sink quietly into the landlord of the Bell? And was the match for love or for money? And what will become of the lame ostler? And how will Jacob's sheep-dog agree with Hester's cat? These, and a thousand such, are the questions of the village, whilst the bells ring inerrily, and the new-married couple wend peaceably home.