ttle inquiry the day before the election, and
discovered that a certain nest-egg was enormously exaggerated, if not
altogether fictitious."

"Well, Bob, there is certainly nobody like yourself for getting
information."

"I do my best. May I inquire into the nature of your future movements?"

"I have not yet made up my mind. These election matters put every thing
else out of one's head. Let me see--August is approaching, and I half
promised the Captain of M'Alcohol to spend a few weeks with him at his
shooting-quarters."

"Are you aware, Dunshunner, that one of your bills falls due at the
Gorbals Bank upon Tuesday next?"

"Mercy upon me, Bob! I had forgotten all about it."

I did not go to the Highlands after all. The fatigue and exertion we had
undergone rendered it quite indispensable that my friend Robert and I
should relax a little. Accordingly we have both embarked for a short run
upon the Continent.

_Boulogue-sur-Mer.
12th August 1847._

THE CRUSADE OF THE CHILDREN.

Some years ago, while the pastoral charge of the little Saxon village of
Groenstetten, from some neglect in the proper authorities, remained vacant,
that neighborhood was visited by a strange religious epidemic. It had
formerly, indeed, been one of the most cheerful places; standing together,
house by house, in the midst of a large, well cultivated plain, on which
the fields, scarcely marked out from one another save by neighbourly
tokens, stretched with their green level to the side, of the woods, only
varied by the different colours of the several crops. The little old
church, surrounded by a few spreading trees, stood at the end of the
village on some higher ground, raising its gilded steeple into the blue
air, so that it always seemed to be touched by an evening sun. Neither
wall nor fence was to be seen, and the surrounding level looked like the
single farm of a brotherhood; the peasants, noticing of a fine Sunday
afternoon how the season had advanced their wheat or flax, appeared to a
stranger almost as much interested in one patch as in another. Various
games and exercises went on amongst the young men and boys after work and
school hours, on the piece of common near the churchyard, while the young
maidens and the old people with their children stood by. Nowhere were
holidays, occasions of marriage, and old festival traditions more fondly
kept; in every house at Christmas, while snow was on the ground and on the
bare woo