extremely ornamental, as things were made a hundred years ago, with a minute porter's-lodge shut up, plainly intimating that few carriages rolled up that twilight avenue, to which entrance was given by a little posterndoor at the side. The avenue was narrow, but the trees were great and old, and hid all appearance of the house to which they led. Then came three thatched cottages flanking at a little distance the moss-grown wall which extended down the road from the manor-house gates; and then the path made a sharp turn round the abrupt corner of a gable which projected into it, the grey wall of which was lightened by one homely bowwindow in the upper story, but nothing more. This being the Witcherley Arms, I went no further, though some distant cottages, grey, silent, and rude, caught my eye a little way on. The Witcherley Arms, indeed, was the hamlet of Witcherley-it was something between an inn and a farmhouse, with long low rooms, small windows, and an irregular and rambling extent of building, which it was hard to assign any use for, and which seemed principally filled up with long passages leading to closets and cupboards and laundries in a prodigal and strange profusion. A few rude steps led to the door, within which, on one side, was a little bar, and on the other the common room of the inn. Just in front of the house, surrounded by a little plot of grass, stood a large old elm-tree, with the sign swung high among its branches; opposite was the gate of a farmyard, and the dull walls of a half square of barns and offices; behind, the country seemed to swell into a bit of rising-ground, covered with the woods of the manor-house; but the prospect before was of a rude district broken up by solitary roads, crossing the moorland, and apparently leading nowhere. One leisurely countrycart stood near the door, the horse standing still with dull patience, and that indescribable quiet consciousness that it matters nothing to any one how long the bumpkin stays inside, or the peaceable brute without, which is only to be found in the extreme and undisturbed seclusion

of very rural districts. I confess I entered the Witcherley Arms with a little dismay, and no great expectations of its comfort or good cheer. The public room was large enough, lighted with two casement windows, with a low unequal ceiling and a sanded floor. Two small tables in the windows, and one long one placed across the room behind, with a bristly supply of hard highbacked wooden chairs, were all the furniture. A slow country fellow in a smock frock, the driver of the cart, drank his beer sullenly at one of the smaller tables. The landlord loitered about between the open outer door and the "coffee-room," and I took my seat at the head of the big table, and suggested dinner to the openeyed country maid.

She was more startled than I expected by the idea. Dinner! there was boiled bacon in the house, she knew, and ham and eggs were prac ticable. I was not disposed to be fastidious under present circumstances, so the cloth was spread, and the boiled bacon set before me, preparatory to the production of the more savoury dish. To have a better look at me, the landlord came in and established himself beside the bumpkin in the window. These worthies were not at all of the ruffian kind, but, on the contrary, perfectly honest-looking, obtuse, and leisurely: their dialect was strange to my ear, and their voices confused; but I could make out that what they did talk about was the "Squire."

how

Of course, the most natural topic in the world in a place so primitive; and I, examining my bacon, which was not inviting, paid little attention to them. By-and-by, ever, the landlord loitered out again to the door; and there my attention was attracted at once by a voice without, as different as possible from their mumbling rural voices. This was followed immediately by a quick alert footstep, and then entered the room an old gentleman, little, carefully dressed, precise and particular, in a blue coat with gilt buttons, a spotless white cravat, Hessian boots, and hair of which I could not say with certainty whether it was grey or powdered. He came in as a

monarch comes into a humble corner of his dominions. There could be no doubt about his identity-this was the Squire.

Hodge at the window pulled his forelock reverentially; the old gentleman nodded to him, but turned his quick eye upon me-strangers were somewhat unusual at the Witcherley Arms and then my boiled bacon, which I still only looked at! The Squire drew near with suave and compassionating courtesy: I told him my story-I had missed the train. The train was entirely a new institution in this primitive corner of the country. The old gentleman evidently did not half approve of it, and treated my detention something in the light of a piece of retributive justice. "Ah, haste, haste! nothing else will please us nowadays," he said, shaking his head with dignity; "the good old coach, now, would have carried you comfortably, without the risk of a day's waiting or a broken limb; but novelty carries the day."

I did not say that the railway was, after all, not so extreme a novelty in other parts of the world as in Witcherley, and I was rewarded for my forbearance. "If you do not mind waiting half an hour, and walking half a mile," added the Squire immediately, "I think I can promise you a better dinner than anything you have here-a plain country table, sir, nothing more, and a house of the old style; but better than honest Giles's bacon, to which I see you don't take very kindly. He will give you a good bed, though -a clean, comfortable bed. I have slept myself, sir, on occasion, at the Witcherley Arms."

When he said this, some recollection or consciousness came for an instant across the old gentleman's countenance; and the landlord, who stood behind him, and who was also an old man, uttered what seemed to me a kind of suppressed groan. The Squire heard it, and turned around upon him quickly.

"If your gable-room is not other wise occupied to-night," said the old gentleman-" mind I do not say it will, or is likely to be-put the gentleman into it, Giles."

The landlord groaned again a singular affirmative, which roused my curiosity at once. Was it haunted? or what could there be of tragical or mysterious connected with the gableroom?

However, I had only to make my acknowledgements, and accept with thanks the Squire's proposal, and we set out immediately for the manorhouse. My companion looked hale, active, and light of foot-scarcely sixty-a comely, well-preserved old gentleman, with a clear frosty complexion, blue eyes without a cloud, features somewhat high and delicate, and altogether, in his refined and particular way, looked like the head of a long-lived patriarchal race, who might live a hundred years. He paused, however, when we got to the corner, to look to the north over the broken country on which the sunshine slanted as the day began to wane. It was a wild solitary prospect, as different as possible from the softer scenes through which I had come to Witcherley. Those broken bits of road, rough cart-tracks over the moor, with heaps of stones piled here and there, the intention of which one could not decide upon; fir-trees, all alone and by themselves, growing singly at the angles of the roadsometimes the long horizontal gleam of water in a deep cutting-sometimes a green bit of moss, prophetic of pitfall and quagmire-and no visible moving thing upon the whole scene. The picture to me was somewhat desolate. My new friend, however, gazed upon it with a lingering eye, sighed, did not say anythingbut, turning round with a little vehemence, took some highly-flavoured snuff from a small gold box, and seemed, under cover of this innocent stimulant, to shake off some emotion. As he did so, looking back I saw the inmates of the Witcherley Arms at the door, in a little crowd gazing at him. The landscape must have been as familiar to him as he was to these good people. I began to grow very curious. Was anything going to happen to the old Squire?

The old Squire, however, was of the class of men who enjoy conversation, and relish a good listener. He led me down through the noiseless

road, past the three cottages, to the manorial gates, with a pleasant little stream of remark and explanation, a little jannty wit, little caustic observation, great natural shrewdness, and some little knowledge of the world. Entering in by that little side-door to the avenue, was like coming out of daylight into sudden night. The road was narrow-the trees tall, old, and of luxuriant growth. I did not wonder that his worship was proud of them, but, for myself, should have preferred something less gloomy. The line was long, too, and wound upwards by an irregular ascent; and the thick dark foliage concealed, till we had almost reached it, the manor-house, which turned its turreted gable-end towards us, by no means unlike the Witcherley Arms.

It was a house of no particular date or character-old, irregular, and somewhat picturesque-built of the grey limestone of the district, spotted over with lichens, and covering here and there the angle of a wall with an old growth of exuberant ivy-ivy so old, thick, and luxuriant, that there was no longer any shapeliness or distinctive character in the big, blunt, glossy leaves. A small lawn before the door, graced with one clipped yewtree, was the only glimpse of air or daylight, so far as I could see, about the house; for the trees closed in on every side, as if to shut it out entirely from all chance of seeing or being seen. The big hall-door opened from without, and I followed the Squire with no small curiosity into the noiseless house, in which I could not hear a single domestic sound. Perhaps drawing-rooms were not in common use at Witcherley-at all events we went at once to the dining-room, a large long apartment, with an ample fireplace at the upper endthree long windows on one side, and a curious embayed alcove in the corner, projecting from the room like an afterthought of the builder. To this pretty recess you descended by a single step from the level of the diningroom, and it was lighted by a broad, Elizabethan oriel window, with a cushioned seat all round, fastened to the wall. We went here, naturally passing by the long dining-table,

which occupied the almost entire mid-space of the apartment. These three long dining-room windows looked out upon the lawn and the clipped yew-tree-the oriel looked upon nothing, but was closely overshadowed by a group of lime-trees casting down a tender, cold, green light through their delicate wavering leaves. There were old panel portraits on the walls, old crimson hangings,-a carpet, of which all the colours were blended and indistinguishable with old age. The chairs in the recess were covered with embroidery as faded as the carpet; everything bore the same tone of antiquity. At the same time, everything appeared in the most exemplary order, well-preserved and graceful-without a trace of wealth, and with many traces of frugality, yet undebased by any touch of shabbiness. And as the Squire placed himself in the stiff elbow-chair in this pleasant little alcove, and cast his eye with becoming dignity down the long line of the room, I could not but recognise a pleasant and suitable congeniality between my host and his house.

Presently a grave middle-aged man-servant entered the room, and busied himself very quietly spreading the table-the Squire in the mean time entering upon a polite and good-humoured catechetical examination of myself; but pausing now and then to address a word to Joseph, which Joseph answered with extreme brevity and great respectfulness. There was nothing inquisitive or disagreeable in the Squire's inquiries; on the contrary, they were pleasant indications of the kindly interest which an old man often shows in a young one unexpectedly thrown into his path. I was by no means uninterested, meanwhile, in the slowly-completed arrangements of the dinner-table, all accomplished so quietly. When Joseph had nearly finished his operations, a tall young fellow in a shooting-coat, sullen, loutish, and down-looking, lounged into the room, and threw himself into an easy-chair. He did not bear a single feature of resemblance to the courtly old beau beside me, yet was his son notwithstand

ing beyond all controversy-the heir of the house. Then came the earlier instalments of the dinner; and simultaneously with the silver tureen appeared an old lady, who dropped me a noiseless curtsey, and took her seat at the head of the table, without a word. I could make nothing whatever of this mistress of the house. She was dressed in some faded rich brocaded dress, entirely harmonising with the carpets and the embroidered chairs, and wore a large faint brooch at her neck, with a half obliterated miniature, set round with dull yellow pearls. She sent me soup, and carved the dishes placed before her in a noiseless, seemingly motionless way, which there was no comprehending; and was either the most mechanical automaton in existence, or a person stunned and petrified. The young Squire sat opposite myself, one person only at the long vacant side of the table, with his back to the three windows. An uneasy air of shame, sullenness, and half-resentment hung about him, and he, too, never spoke. In spite, however, of this uncomfortable companionship, the Squire, in his place at the foot of the table, kept up his pleasant, lively, vivacious stream of conversation without the slightest damp or restraint,-gave forth his old-fashioned formal witticisms-his maxins of the old world, his dignified country-gentleman reflections upon the errors of the new. Silent sat the presiding shadow at the head-silent the lout in the middle. The old servant, grave, solemn, and almost awe-stricken, moved silently about behind; yet, little assisted by my own discomposed and embarrassed responses, there was quite a lively sound of conversation at the table, kept up by the brave old Squire.

With the conclusion of the dinner, and with another little noiseless curtsey, the old lady disappeared as she came. I had not heard the faintest whisper of her voice during the whole time, nor observed her looking at any one; and it was almost a relief to hear her dress rustle softly as she glided out of the room. It seemed to me, however, that our attendant took an unneces

sarily long time in arranging the few plates of fruit and placing the wine upon the table; and lingered with visible anxiety, casting stealthy looks of mingled awe and sympathy at his master, and exercising a watchful and jealous observation of the young Squire. The old Squire, however, took no notice, for his part, of the sullenness of his heir, or the watch of Joseph, but pared his apple briskly, and went on with his description of a celebrated old house in the neighbourhood, which, if I had another day to spare, I would find it very much worth my while to see. "At another time," said the old gentleman, "I might have offered you my own services as guide and cicerone; but present circumstances make that impracticable; however, I advise you sincerely, go yourself and see."

As he said these words, there seemed a simultaneous start of consciousness on the part of the young man and of the servant. Joseph's napkin fell out of his hands, and he hurried from the room without picking it up; while the young Squire, with an evidently irrestrainable motion, pushed back his chair from the table, grew violently red, drank half-a-dozen glasses of wine in rapid succession, and cast a furtive and rapid glance at his father, who, perfectly lively and at his ease, talked on without a moment's discomposure. Then the young man rose up suddenly, walked away from the table, tossed the fallen napkin into the fireplace with his foot, came back again, grasped the back of his chair, cleared his throat, and, turning his flushed face towards his father without lifting his eyes, seemed trying in vain to invent words for something which he had to say.

Whatever it was, it would not bear words. The young Hercules, a fine, manly, full-grown figure, stood exactly opposite me, with his downlooking eyes; but all that he seemed able to articulate was a beginning"I say, father; father, I say."

"No occasion for saying another word about the matter, my boy," said the old gentleman. "I understand you perfectly-come back as early as you please to morrow, and you'll find