:

ness, she had drawn suddenly back all these corroborating circumstances pressed at once with startling distinctness on Mrs. Villars's memory; and, full of care, she returned to the farm to crossquestion Mrs. Ashton.

Never was examination more thoroughly unsatisfactory. Mrs. Ashton was that provoking and refractory thing, a reluctant witness. First, she disputed the facts of the case: "had Mrs. Villars seen the boat? Was she sure that she had seen it? Was it actually their own green boat? Did it really contain two persons? And was the female certainly Anne ?”

All these questions being answered in the affirmative, Mrs. Ashton shifted her ground, and asserted that "If the female in question were certainly Anne, her companion must with equal certainty have been the boatman, Bob Green, Hopping Bob,' as he was called!" and the farmer coming in at the moment, she called on him to support her assertion, which, without hearing a word of the story, he did most positively, as a dutiful and obedient husband ought to do-"Yes, for certain it must be Hopping Bob! It could be no other."

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Hopping Bob!" ejaculated Mrs. Villars, whose patience was by this time well nigh exhausted: "Hopping Bob! when I have told you that the person in the boat was a young man, a tall man, a slim man, a gentleman! Hopping Bob, indeed!" and before the words were fairly uttered, in hopped Bob himself.

To Mrs. Villars this apparition gave unqualified satisfaction, by affording, as she declared, the most triumphant evidence of an alibi ever produced in or out of a court of justice. Her opponent,

however, was by no means disposed to yield the point. She had perfect confidence in Bob's quickness of apprehension, and no very strong fear of his abstract love of truth, and determined to try the effect of a leading question. She immediately, therefore, asked him, with much significance of manner, "whether he had not just landed from the lake, and reached the farm by the short cut across the coppice ?" adding "that her niece had probably walked towards the boat-house to meet Mrs. Villars, and that Bob had better go and fetch her."

This question produced no other answer than a long whistle from the sagacious boatman. Whether Mrs. Ashton over-rated his ability, or underrated his veracity, or whether his shrewdness foresaw that detection was inevitable, and that it would "hurt his conscience to be found out," whichever were the state of the case he positively declined giving any evidence on the question; and after standing for a few moments eyeing his hostess with a look of peculiar knowingness, vented another long whistle, and hopped off again.

Mrs. Villars, all her fears confirmed, much disgusted with the farmer, and still more so with the farmer's wife, was also departing, when just as she reached the porch, she saw two persons advancing from the lake, to the house-her nephew Harry Villars, and Anne leaning on his arm!

With a countenance full of grieved displeasure, she walked slowly towards them. Harry sprang forward to meet her: "Hear me but for one moment, my dearest aunt! Listen but to four words, and then say what you will. This is my wife."

"Your wife! why I thought you loved Miss Egerton ?"

"Well and this is, or rather happily for me this was Miss Egerton ;" replied Henry smiling.

"Miss Egerton !" exclaimed the amazed and half-incredulous Mrs. Villars. "Miss Egerton! Anne, that was not smart enough for Joseph, the fine lady that sent me the rose-scented note! Anne at the farm, the great heiress! My own good little Anne !"

"Ay, my dear Aunt, your own Anne and my own Anne-blessings on the word! When we were parted on a foolish political quarrel between our fathers, she was sent under the care of her cousin Lady Lemingham to Florence. Lady Lemingham was much my friend. She not only persuaded Anne into marrying me privately, but managed to make the General believe that his daughter continued her inmate abroad; whilst Mrs. Ashton, another good friend of mine, contrived to receive her at home. We have been sad deceivers," continued Harry, "and at last Anne, fettered by a promise of secrecy, which your kindness tempted her every moment to break, could bear the deceit no longer. She wrote to her father, and I spoke to mine; and they are reconciled, and all is forgiven. I see that you forgive us," added he, as his sweet wife lay sobbing on Mrs. Villars's bosom

"I see that you forgive her; and you must forgive me too, for her dear sake. Your pardon is essential to our happiness; for we are really to live at the park, and one of our first wishes must always be, that you may continue at the Great House the kindness that you have shown to Anne at the Farm."

A VISIT TO RICHMOND.

THE macadamised roads, and the light open carriages lately introduced, have so abridged, I had well nigh said annihilated, distance in this fair Island, that what used to be a journey, is now a drive; our neighbourhood has become, from a reverse reason to theirs, as extensive as that of the good people in the back settlements of America; we think nothing of thirty miles for a morning call, or forty for a dinner party; Richmond is quite within visiting distance, and London will shortly be our market-town.

The

This pleasant change was never so strongly impressed on my mind as by a hasty and most agreeable jaunt which I made to the former of these places during one of the few fine days last summer. invitation, written one day, arrived in course of post by breakfast-time the next, and without any uncomfortable hurry in packing or setting off, we were quietly dining with our kind inviters, rather before than after our usual hour, and might have returned very conveniently the same evening, had we been so minded.

There was some temptation to this exploit besides the very great one of whisking to and fro like a jack-o'lantern, and making all the village stare at our rapidity. Our road lay through the Forest, and we might have passed again by moonlight the old romantic royal town of Windsor, with its stately palace and its Shaksperian associations-I never catch a glimpse of those antique buildings, but those "Merry Wives" and all their company start

up before my eyes; might have heard the nightwind rustle amongst the venerable oaks and beeches of its beautiful park; might have seen the deer couching in the fern, and the hare scudding across the glades; and as we paused to contemplate the magical effects of light and shadow which forest scenery displays at such an hour, might have seen the castle in the distance, throwing its dark masses against the sky, and looking like some stupendous work of nature, or some grand dream of gothic architecture, rather than an actual erection of man. Every body that has seen Windsor by moonlight will understand how much one wishes to see that most striking sight again;-but our friends were not people to run away from, besides I wanted to get better acquainted with the celebrated spot where they resided so we staid.

"God made the Country and man made the Town!" I wonder in which of the two divisions Cowper would have placed Richmond. Every Londoner would laugh at the rustic who should call it town, and with foreigners it passes pretty generally for a sample (the only one they see) of the rural villages of England; and yet it is no more like the country, the real untrimmed genuine country, as we see it hereabouts for instance, than a garden is like a field. I do not say this in disparagement. Richmond is nature in a court-dress, but still nature,-ay, and very lovely nature too, gay and happy and elegant as one of Charles the Second's beauties, and with as little to remind one of the original penalty of labour, or poverty, or grief, or crime. I suppose that since no place on the globe is wholly exempt from their influence, care and vice may exist even there. They are however well hidden. The inhabitants may find