dimple. Her manners, as well as they could be judged of in passing to and from church, leading one of the little Martins by the hand, and occasionally talking to him, seemed as graceful as her person, and as open as her countenance. All the village agreed that she was a lovely creature, and all the village wondered who she could be. It was a most animating puzzle.

There was, however, no mystery in the story of Grace Neville. She was the only child of an officer of rank, who fell in an early stage of the Peninsular war: her mother had survived him but a short time, and the little orphan had been reared in great tenderness and luxury by her maternal uncle, a kind, thoughtless, expensive man, speculating and sanguine, who, after exhausting a good fortune in vain attempts to realize a great one, sinking money successively in farming, in cotton-spinning, in paper-making, in a silk-mill, and a mine, found himself one fair morning actually ruined, and died (such things have happened) of a broken heart, leaving poor Grace at threeand-twenty, with the habits and education of an heiress, totally destitute.

The poor girl found, as usual, plenty of comforters and advisers. Some recommended her to sink the little fortune she possessed in right of her father in a school; some to lay it by for old age, and go out as a governess; some hinted at the possibility of matrimony, advising, that at all events so fine a young woman should try her fortune by visiting about amongst her friends for a year or two, and favoured her with a husband-hunting invitation accordingly. But Grace was too independent and too proud for a governess; too sick of schemes for a school; and the hint matrimonial had effectually prevented her from accepting any, even the most unsuspected, invitation. Besides, she said, and perhaps she thought, that she was weary of the world; so she wrote to Mrs. Martin, once her uncle's housekeeper, now the substantial wife of a substantial farmer, and came down to lodge with her in our secluded village.

Poor Grace, what a change! It was midwinter; snowy, foggy, sleety, wet. Kinlayend, an old manor-house dilapidated into its present condition, stood with its windows half closed, a huge vine covering its front, and ivy climbing up the sides to the roof-the very image of chillness and desolation. There was, indeed, one habitable wing, repaired and fitted up as an occasional sporting residence for the landlord; but those apartments were locked; and she lived, like the rest of the family, in the centre of the house, made up of great, low, dark rooms, with oaken panels, of long, rambling passages, of interminable galleries, and broad, gusty staircases, up which you might drive a coach and six.Such was the prospect within doors; and without, mud! mud! mud! nothing but mud!

Then the noises;-wind, in all its varieties, combined with bats, rats, cats, owls, pigs, cows, geese, ducks, turkeys, chickens, and children, in all varieties, also; for besides the regular inhabitants of the farm-yard,-biped and quadruped,-Mrs. Martin had within doors sundry coops of poultry, two pet lambs, and four boys from six years old downward, who were, in some way or other, exercising their voices all day long. Mrs. Martin, too, she whilome so soft-spoken and demure, had now found her scolding tongue, and was, indeed, noted for that accomplishment all over the parish: the maid was saucy, and the farmer smoked.

Poor Grace Neville! what a trial! what a

contrast! she tried to draw; tried to sing; tried to read; tried to work; and, above all, tried to be contented. But nothing would do.

The vainest endeavour of all was the last. She was of the social, cheerful temperament, to which sympathy is necessary; and having no one to whom she could say, how pleasant! is solitude! began to find solitude the most tiresome thing in the world. Mr. and Mrs. Martin were very good sort of people in their way-scolding and smoking notwithstanding; but their way was so different from hers: and the children, whom she might have found some amusement in spoiling, were so spoilt already as to be utterly unbearable.

The only companionable person about the place was a slipshod urchin, significantly termed "the odd boy ;" an extra and supplementary domestic, whose department it is to help all the others, out of doors and in; to do all that they leave undone; and to bear the blame of every thing that goes amiss. The personage in question, Dick Crosby by name, was a parish boy taken from the work-house. He was, as nearly as could be guessed, (for nobody took the trouble to be certain about his age) somewhere bordering on eleven; a long, lean, famished-looking boy, with a pale complexion, sharp thin features, and sunburnt hair. His dress was usually a hat without a crown; a tattered round frock; stockings that scarcely covered his ankles, and shoes that hung on his feet by the middle like clogs, down at heel, and open at toe. Yet, underneath all these rags, and through all his huffings and cuffings from master and mistress, carter and maid, the boy looked, and was, merry and contented; was even a sort of wag in his way; sturdy and independent] in his opinions, and constant in his attachments. He had a pet sheep-dog (for amongst his numerous avocations he occasionally acted as under-shepherd) a spectral, ghastly-looking animal, with a huge white head and neck, and a gaunt black body.-Mephistopheles might have put himself into such a shape. He had also a pet donkey, the raggedest brute upon the common, of whom he was part owner, and for whose better maintenance he was some

times accused of such petty larceny as may be comprised in stealing what no other creature would eat, refuse hay, frosty turnips, decayed cabbage-leaves, and thistles from the hedge.

These two faithful followers had long shared Dick Crosby's affections between them; but from the first day of Miss Neville's appearance, the dog and the donkey found a rival. She happened to speak to him, and her look and voice won his heart at once and for ever. Never had a high-born damsel in the days of chivalry so devoted a page. He was at her command by night or by day; nay, "though she called another, Abra came.' He would let nobody else clean her shoes, carry her clogs, or run her errands; was always at hand to open the gates, and chase away the cows when she walked; forced upon her his own hoard of nuts; and scoured the country to get her the wintry nosegays which the mildness of the season permitted, sweet-scented coltsfoot, china-roses, laurustinus, and stocks.

It was not in Grace's nature to receive such proofs of attachment without paying them in kind. Dick would hardly have been her choice for a pet, but being so honestly and artlessly chosen by him, she soon began to return the compliment, and showered upon him marks of her favour and protection; perhaps a little gratified, so mixed are human motives! to find that her patronage was still of consequence at Kinlay-end. Halfpence and sixpences, apples and gingerbread, flowed into Dick's pocket, and his outward man underwent a thorough transformation. He cast his rags, and for the first time in his life put on an entire new suit of clothes. A proud boy was Dick that day. It is recorded that he passed a whole hour in alternate fits of looking in the glass and shouts of laughter. He laughed till he cried, for sheer happiness. I have been thus particular in my account of Dick, because, in the first place, he was an old acquaintance of mine, a constant and promising attendant at the cricket-groundhis temperament being so mercurial, that even in his busiest days, when he seemed to bave work enough upon his hands for ten boys, he would still make time for play; in the second, because I owe to him the great obligation of being known to his fair patroness. He had persuaded her, one dry afternoon, to go with him, and let him show her the dear cricketground; I happened to be passing the spot; and neither of us could ever exactly rememher how he managed the matter, but the boy introduced us. He was an extraordinary master of the ceremonies, to be sure; but the introduction was most effectually performed, and to our mutual surprise and mutual pleasure we found ourselves acquainted. I have always thought it one of the highest compliments * paid me, that Dick Crosby thought me worthy to be known to Miss Neville.

We were friends in five minutes. I found the promise of her lovely countenance amply redeemed by her character. She was frank, ardent, and spirited, with a cultivated mind, and a sweet temper; not to have loved her would have been impossible; and she, beside the natural pleasure of talking to one who could understand and appreciate her, was delighted to come to a house where the mistress did not scold, or the master smoke; where there were neither pigs, chickens, nor children.

As spring advanced and the roads improved, we saw each other almost every day; the soft skies and mild breezes of April, and the profuse floweriness of hedge-row, wood and field, gave a never-failing charm to our long rural walks. Grace was fond of wild flowers, which her protegé Dick was assiduous in procuring. He had even sacrificed the vanity of sticking the first bunch of primroses in his Sunday-hat to the pleasure of offering them to her. They supplied her with an in-door amusement; she drew well, and copied his field nosegays with ease and delicacy. She had obtained, too, the loan of a piano, and talked stoutly of constant and vigorous practice, and of pursuing a steady course of reading. All young ladies, I believe, make such resolutions, and some few may possibly keep them; Miss Neville did not.

However lively and animated whilst her spirits were excited by society, it was evident that, when alone, poor Grace was languid and listless, and given to reverie. She would even fall into long fits of musing in company, start when spoken to, droop her fair head like a snow-drop, and sigh, oh such sighs! so long, so deep, so frequent, so drawn from the very heart! They might, to be sure, have been accounted for by the great and sad change in her situation, and the death of her indulgent uncle; but these griefs seemed worn out. I had heard such sighs before, and could not help imputing them to a different cause.

My suspicions were increased, when I found out accidentally that Dick and his donkey travelled every morning three miles to meet just such another Dick and such another donkey, who acted as letter-carriers to that side of the village. They would have arrived at Kinlay-end by noon in their natural progress, but Grace could not wait; so Dick and the donkey made a short cut across the country to way lay his namesake of the letter-bag, and fetch disappointment four hours sooner. It was quite clear that whatever epistles might arrive, the one so earnestly desired never came. Then she was so suspiciously fond of moonlight, and nightingales, and tender poesy; and in the choice of her music, she would so repeat over and over one favourite duet, and would so blush if the repetition were remarked!-Surely she could not always have sung "La ci darem" by herself. Poor Grace Ne

the whole world quiet and melancholy as some of the enchanted places in the Arabian tales. That merry peal seemed at once to break the spell, and to awaken sound, and life, and motion. It had a peculiar welcome too, as stirring up one of the most active passions in woman or in man, and rousing the rational part of creation from the torpor induced by the season and the weather at the thrilling touch of curiosity. Never was a completer puzzle. Nobody in our village had heard that a wedding was expected; no unaccustomed conveyance, from a coach to a wheelbarrow, had been observed passing up the vicarage lane; no banns had been published, in church-no marriage of gentility, that is to say, of license, talked of, or thought of; none of our village beaux had been seen, as village beaux are apt to be on such occasions, smirk ing and fidgety; none of our village belles ashamed and shy. It was the prettiest puzzle that had occurred since Grace Neville's time; and, regardless of the weather, half the gossips of the street-in other words, half the inhabitants-gathered together in knots and clusters, to discuss flirtations and calculate possibilities.

Sull 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 rid dles 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 ames 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.

ing up customers where a man of less experience would despair, and so used to utter those sounds while marching beside his rumbling equipage, that it would not be at all surprising if he were to cry "Cherries-salmon ! salmon-cherries!" in his sleep. As to fatigue, that is entirely out of the question. Jacob is a man of iron; a tall, lean, gaunt figure, all bone and sinew, constantly clad in a tight brown jacket with breeches to match, long leather gaiters, and a leather cap; his face and hair tanned by constant exposure to the weather into a tint so nearly resembling his vestments, that he looks all of a colour, like the statue ghost in Don Giovanni, although the hue be different from that renowned spectre-Jacob being a brown man. Perhaps Master Peter in Don Quixote, him of the ape and the shamoy doublet, were the apter comparison; or, with all reverence be it spoken, the ape himself. His visage is spare, and lean, and saturnine, enlivened by a slight cast in the dexter eye, and diversified by a partial loss of his teeth, all those on the left hand having been knocked out by a cricket ball, which, aided by the before-mentioned obliquity of vision, gives a peculiar one-sided expression to his physiognomy.

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.

and the old white mare, who perfectly understands the affair, may generally be found in happy quietude under some shady hedge;— whilst a black sheep-dog, his constant and