ke, tossing about on my
hard couch, listening to the rustle of every leaf, and occasionally
thinking that I heard the sound of her wheels upon the distant road. Once
at midnight, just as I was about to fall into unconsciousness, I suddenly
started up, for I was convinced that I heard the sound of wheels. I
listened most anxiously, and the sound of wheels striking against stones
was certainly plain enough. "She comes at last," thought I, and for a
few moments I felt as if a mountain had been removed from my
breast;--"here she comes at last, now, how shall I receive her? Oh,"
thought I, "I will receive her rather coolly, just as if I was not
particularly anxious about her--that's the way to manage these women."
The next moment the sound became very loud, rather too loud, I thought,
to proceed from her wheels, and then by degrees became fainter. Rushing
out of my tent, I hurried up the path to the top of the dingle, where I
heard the sound distinctly enough, but it was going from me, and
evidently proceeded from something much larger than the cart of Isopel. I
could, moreover, hear the stamping of a horse's hoof at a lumbering trot.
Those only whose hopes have been wrought up to a high pitch, and then
suddenly cast down, can imagine what I felt at that moment; and yet when
I returned to my lonely tent, and lay down on my hard pallet, the voice
of conscience told me that the misery I was then undergoing I had fully
merited, for the unkind manner in which I had intended to receive her,
when for a brief moment I supposed that she had returned.

It was on the morning after this affair, and the fourth, if I forget not,
from the time of Isopel's departure, that, as I was seated on my stone at
the bottom of the dingle, getting my breakfast, I heard an unknown voice
from the path above--apparently that of a person descending--exclaim,
"Here's a strange place to bring a letter to;" and presently an old
woman, with a belt round her middle, to which was attached a leathern
bag, made her appearance, and stood before me.

"Well, if I ever!" said she, as she looked about her. "My good
gentlewoman," said I, "pray what may you please to want?" "Gentlewoman!"
said the old dame, "please to want--well, I call that speaking civilly,
at any rate. It is true, civil words cost nothing; nevertheless, we do
not always get them. What I please to want is to deliver a letter to a
young man in this place; perhaps you be he?" "What's the nam