all idea of ever
offering them to public notice?"

"But which convinces me still more that matters have turned out for the
best; and that if your poetical effusions had been published, they would
have brought you far more ridicule than praise," thought Frank. But at
the same time, not wishing to hurt his companion's feelings, he
said--"Yet, probably, when you have again revised the manuscripts, and
bestowed some of your masterly finishing touches here and there, you
will, after all, congratulate yourself upon the source of your present
disappointment."

"That's an impossibility--an utter impossibility," returned Vernon
Wycherley--"for were I to look through them a hundred times, I should
never alter a word.----But stay--Look! look!--what is that I see? Two
ladies on horseback, I declare! who could have anticipated meeting with
such an occurrence in so outlandish a place?"

The place was by no means undeserving of the remark, being devoid of any
kind of vegetation, except some straggling heath and a few patches of
stunted gorse, which here and there sprung up amidst the rugged
spar-stones that, intermixed with rude crags of granite, were thickly
scattered over this wide waste, which, throughout its vast extent,
afforded as perfect a picture of sterility as can be well conceived.
With this brief outline of the scenery, we must next attempt to describe
the parties who were wandering over it.

Frank Trevelyan was about two-and-twenty. In figure he was rather below
the middle height, and being slightly made and with the proportions of a
tall man, he looked much less than he actually was. His features were
not handsome, but he possessed what in a man is far more important--a
highly intelligent and intellectual cast of countenance. He wore his
hair, which was light and curly, cut very close, and incipient whiskers
adorned the outline of his lower jaw. He was dressed in a gray tweed
wrapper, with trousers of the Brougham pattern, and he sported a
hat--black, but whether beaver or gossamer we are uninformed--high in
the crown, but very narrow in the brim, bearing altogether no very
remote resemblance to an inverted flower-pot.

His companion was about the same age, but the latter had made so much
better use of his growing years, as to have shot up to something more
than six feet in height; yet his figure, though slender, exhibited no
appearance of weakness. His features were passably good--the nose
perhaps rather too proje