without halting. I dreaded to meet them, and to
be the bearer of my tragic story, so while they were still occupied in the
hurry of arrival, I suddenly left them, and through the snow and clear
moon-light air, hastened along the well known road to Datchet.

Well known indeed it was. Each cottage stood on its accustomed site, each
tree wore its familiar appearance. Habit had graven uneraseably on my
memory, every turn and change of object on the road. At a short distance
beyond the Little Park, was an elm half blown down by a storm, some ten
years ago; and still, with leafless snow-laden branches, it stretched
across the pathway, which wound through a meadow, beside a shallow brook,
whose brawling was silenced by frost--that stile, that white gate, that
hollow oak tree, which doubtless once belonged to the forest, and which now
shewed in the moonlight its gaping rent; to whose fanciful appearance,
tricked out by the dusk into a resemblance of the human form, the children
had given the name of Falstaff;--all these objects were as well known to
me as the cold hearth of my deserted home, and every moss-grown wall and
plot of orchard ground, alike as twin lambs are to each other in a
stranger's eye, yet to my accustomed gaze bore differences, distinction,
and a name. England remained, though England was dead--it was the ghost
of merry England that I beheld, under those greenwood shade passing
generations had sported in security and ease. To this painful recognition
of familiar places, was added a feeling experienced by all, understood by
none--a feeling as if in some state, less visionary than a dream, in some
past real existence, I had seen all I saw, with precisely the same feelings
as I now beheld them--as if all my sensations were a duplex mirror of a
former revelation. To get rid of this oppressive sense I strove to imagine
change in this tranquil spot--this augmented my mood, by causing me to
bestow more attention on the objects which occasioned me pain.

I reached Datchet and Lucy's humble abode--once noisy with Saturday night
revellers, or trim and neat on Sunday morning it had borne testimony to the
labours and orderly habits of the housewife. The snow lay high about the
door, as if it had remained unclosed for many days.

"What scene of death hath Roscius now to act?" I muttered to myself as
I looked at the dark casements. At first I thought I saw a light in one of
them, but it proved to be merely the refraction o