fit of
the invalided paupers. It was a dreary evening in February, and
everything was looking chilly and black, except, by the bye, an early
primrose peering out from the side of a crumbling tomb in the very
darkest corner of the whole--that looked fresh and bright enough.

I suspect the sort of humour I was now in, to have been occasioned
either by my illness, the death-bed I had just witnessed, or the
separation for a whole week to come from a person for whom I had
lately found that I felt "a deep and tender friendship."

About thirty miles from my parish, lived my nearest neighbours, and
with whom I had become rather intimate. So much was this the case,
that this place gradually assumed the character of what I recollect
"home" once used to have for me, many years ago. To this house I used
frequently to canter over on a Sunday's evening with all the delight
of a school-boy returning from a detested school.

Until now I had thought that my benevolent host had here been my
greatest friend; but there was another for whom, to my infinite
surprise, I found that I felt far more intensely. Yet it was odd that,
in her presence, I was apparently cold and inattentive, and thus,
perhaps, it might have ever been, had she not unguardedly attracted my
attention by what she meant for a severe rebuke. I happened to be
walking with her and a gentleman whose wife had lately experienced, on
some occasion, a narrow escape of her life; "and so Miss Bassett I had
nearly become a gentleman free of incumbrance, and then I should have
come and proposed to you."

"But then I should have tried to thwart you, for the mere sake of
opposition," was my rather too free and easy reply.

"Oh, Mr. Graham," she answered, "you might have set your mind quite at
rest on the subject, for I should have preferred Mr. Goodriche a
thousand times before you."

"For what possible reason, Miss Bassett?" I asked, in sober earnest.

"Because I could have led a quiet, happy life with him--now perhaps I
might have liked you, and then you would have immediately behaved like
a wretch, and broken my heart."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] One who kills game exclusively to lessen his butcher's bill.

CHAPTER III.

It was on my way to London, in company with her father, that, as the
sun rose, I caught a glimpse in the horizon of the hill, on the other
side of which the abode of my family was situated--I may not call it
home, for it is too true, that "without hearts