jected in three days would certainly have hanged himself in Sally North's scarlet garters, had he not had the lucky resource of tender poesy, that admirable vent-peg of disappointed love. He went back to Town, and wrote an elegy, and we have heard no more of him since.

So much for our villagers. With regard to my own small territory, it has lost one of its prime ornaments; my beautiful greyhound Mayflower is dead. Old age and the cold weather were too much for her. Poor pretty May! She lies under a rose-tree in a place she liked well. And my garden, "that bright bit of color," as you call it, and which in the summer so well deserves the name; my garden is much like a small field newly harrowed, except that a grove of sticks seems to indicate the site of bulbs and perennials and other underground treasures. Matters are mending though. Two mild days have brought up a few green buds just peeping above the earth, and the borders begin to show symptoms of floweriness. The snowdrop, the crocus, the hepatica, and the aconite are already in blossom (to think of being able to count the flowers in my garden!) and the Mezereon, and the Pyrus Japonica will be out to-morrow. Things are certainly mending. My green-house looks really spring-like, and the robin which has inhabited that warm shelter during the whole winter, making no further excursion than to the honeysuckle opposite and back again, has ventured to the great pear-tree, and has got a companion, the rogue! I should not wonder if he built him a nest, and only visited us when he wanted bread crumbs.

The green-house does really give token of spring. You do not know my green-house, dear

come.

Mary, but you must come and see it. You have promised; have you not? At all events you must It is the simplest thing that ever was, and the prettiest an excavation in a barn with glass in front looking on my nosegay of a garden, and serving like Cowper's, the double purpose of a shelter for the geraniums in winter, and a summer parlour for ourselves. When they go out, we go in. Last year which was generally so mild, a short sharp frost took us by surprise, and killed all my plants; but this severe winter we were prepared, and have saved them-and you must come to see them and to see us-and then we shall like the green-house better still.

Ever yours, &c. &c.

LOST AND WON.

"NAY, but my dear Letty-"

"Don't dear Letty me, Mr. Paul Holton! Have not the East-Woodhay Eleven beaten the Hazelby Eleven for the first time in the memory of man? and is it not entirely your fault? Answer me that sir! Did not you insist on taking James White's place, when he got that little knock on the leg with the ball last night, though James, poor fellow, maintained to the last that he could play better with one leg than you with two? Did not you insist on taking poor James's place? and did you get a single notch in either innings? And did not you miss three catches-three fair catches

Mr. Paul Holton? Might not you twice have caught out John Brown, who, as all the world knows, hits up? And did not a ball from the edge of Tom Taylor's bat come into your hands, absolutely into your hands, and did not you let her go? And did not Tom Taylor after that get forty-five runs in that same innings, and thereby win the game? That a man should pretend to play at cricket, and not be able to hold the ball when he has her in his hands! Oh, if I had been there!"

"You!-Why Letty”

"Don't Letty me, sir!-Don't talk to me !-I am going home!"

"With all my heart, Miss Letitia Dale !—I have the honour, madam, to wish you a good evening." And each turned away at a smart pace, and the one went westward and the other eastward-ho.

This unlover-like parting occurred on Hazelby Down one fine afternoon in the Whitsun-week, between a couple whom all Hazelby and Aberleigh to boot, had, for at least a month before, set down. as lovers-Letty Dale, the pretty daughter of the jolly old tanner, and Paul Holton, a rich young yeoman, on a visit in the place. Letty's angry speech will sufficiently explain their mutual provocation, although, to enter fully into her feelings, one must be born in a cricketing parish, and sprung of a cricketing family, and be accustomed to rest that very uncertain and arbitrary standard, the point of honour, on beating our rivals and next neighbours in the annual match-for juxta-position is a great sharpener of rivalry, as Dr. Johnson knew, when, to please the inhabitants of Plymouth, he abused the good folks who lived at Dock; moreover, one must be also a quick, zealous, ardent, hot-headed, warm-hearted girl, like

Letty, a beauty and an heiress, quite unused to disappointment, and not a little in love, and then we shall not wonder, in the first place, that she should be unreasonably angry, or, in the next, that before she had walked half a mile her anger vanished, and was succeeded by tender relentings and earnest wishes for a full and perfect reconciliation. "He'll be sure to call to-morrow morning," thought Letty to herself: "He said he would, before this unlucky cricket-playing. He told me that he had something to say, something particular. I wonder what it can be!" thought poor Letty. "To be sure, he never has said any thing about liking me but still-and then aunt Judith, and Fanny Wright, and all the neighbours say.

However, I shall know to-morrow." And home she tripped to the pleasant house by the tan-yard, as happy as if the East-Woodhay men had not beaten the men of Hazelby. "I shall not see him before to-morrow, though," repeated Letty to herself, and immediately repaired to her pretty flowergarden, the little gate of which opened on a path leading from the Down to the street-a path that, for obvious reasons, Paul was wont to prefer-and began tying up her carnations in the dusk of the evening, and watering her geraniums by the light of the moon, until it was so late that she was fain to return, disappointed, to the house, repeating to herself, "I shall certainly see him to-morrow.'

Far different were the feelings of the chidden swain. Well-a-day for the age of chivalry! the happy times of knights and paladins, when a lecture from a lady's rosy lip, or a buffet from her lily hand, would have been received as humbly and as thankfully as the Benedicite from a mitred abbot, or the accolade from a king's sword! Alas for

the days of chivalry! They are gone, and I fear me for ever. For certain our present hero was not born to revive them.

Paul Holton was a well-looking and well-educated young farmer, just returned from the north, whither he had been sent for agricultural improvement, and now on the look-out for a farm and a wife, both of which he thought he had found at Hazelby, where he had come on the double errand of visiting some distant relations, and letting two or three small houses recently fallen into his possession. As owner of these houses, all situate in the town, he had claimed a right to join the Hazelby Eleven, mainly induced to avail himself of the privilege by the hope of winning favour in the eyes of the ungrateful fair one, whose animated character, as well as her sparkling beauty, had delighted his fancy, and apparently won his heart, until her rude attack on his play armed all the vanity of man against her attractions. Love is more intimately connected with self-love than people are willing to imagine; and Paul Holton's had been thoroughly mortified. Besides, if his fair mistress's character were somewhat too impetuous, his was greatly over-firm. So he said to himself "The girl is a pretty girl, but far too much of a shrew for my taming. I am no Petruchio to master this Catherine. I come to wive it happily in Padua:' and let her father be as rich as he may, I'll none of her." And, mistaking anger for indifference-no uncommon delusion in a lovequarrel-off he set within the hour, thinking so very much of punishing the saucy beauty, that he entirely forgot the possibility of some of the pain falling to his own share.

The first tidings that Letty heard the next morn