off. At eight o'clock accordingly, having ascertained
from my friend, the waiter, the name of the street and the
number of the house, I set out, and as I approached it, my
heart beat with a strange mixture of shyness, anxiety, and
curiosity. I pulled the bell, and was almost tempted to run
away when I heard some one walking heavily to the door to open
it. It opened however before I had made up my mind to bolt,
and I asked the slip-shod, red-faced girl who appeared,
whether Miss Tracy lived there?

"Yes, she does (was the answer). What's your will, Miss?"

"Is Miss Alice Tracy staying with her?"

"Yes, she is."

"Is she at home?"

"No, she aint, she's in church, but her grandmother's at
home."

I did not feel courage enough to renew my acquaintance with
Mrs. Tracy, whose reception of me at Bridman Cottage I well
remembered, and whose forbidding countenance had remained
strongly impressed on my recollection. I therefore drew a bit
of paper from my pocket, and hastily writing my name upon it,
I was just handing it to the girl, when it struck me that it
was possible, that, after all, there might be two Alice Tracys
in the world, and that I had better not leave my name at a
venture. I therefore tore off the bit of writing, and on the
remaining slip of paper I drew a passion flower, and requested
the girl to give it to Miss Alice Tracy when she came home.

"But what's your name. Ma'am?" she inquired.

"Never mind it," I replied. "Miss Alice will know it
immediately, if she is my Miss Alice, and if she is not, it
does not signify," and I walked off, leaving the puzzled
portress with her mouth wide open, my sketch in her hand, and
her intellect evidently employed in balancing the
probabilities as to the sanity of mine.

The britschka was at the door when I got back to the inn, and
Mrs. Hatton with her veil down, and her boa round her neck,
was waiting for me in the little sitting-room. We hastened
into the carriage and rattled off through the streets of
Salisbury, and were soon after ascending at a slow pace the
hill that lies on the west side of the town. After a few hours
of uninteresting driving along the high road, we turned into a
lane which brought us at once into a new kind of scenery,
quite different from any that I had yet been acquainted with.
On either side of us rose, in gentle acclivities, a boundless
extent of down, diversified by large patches of gorse, tall
clumps of broom shining in all the gorg