there is no home."
Still, how I must have loved the spot! its woods, its lawns, and its
valleys! No sooner had the steamer touched at a port, than I left my
luggage to go on with it as it might, and jumped out, in order to take
one more peep at a place which set at defiance every recollection that
I could force to rise up in judgment against it.

Having walked twenty miles, I stopped at a public-house within a mile
and a half of the place, for some refreshment, as well as to await the
darkness of night. At ten o'clock I sallied forth, and the first of
the paternal estate on which I trespassed was a large wood, every tree
of which, I might say, was an old acquaintance.

Here, then, what a contrast was I conscious of! Some years back, I
used to range this very wood, the sworn friend of the keeper, in
order to detect the poacher; and now I was listening to every rustle,
and peering along the gloomy paths, lest I myself should be detected
by my former ally. So much did my fears on this point increase on me,
that I took to the open fields, and gained the park.

Here at once, in spite of everything, I felt myself to be on my own
property,--roaming about in ecstacy--visiting every tree that I had
planted and fenced round years ago. Each of these I pruned, and even
had the temerity to steal into the green-house, which was close to the
library, and procure the gardener's saw, with which I climbed up into
an old Scotch fir, and dismembered a large limb which over-hung and
injured a lime-tree I had planted in the dell below. Having sawed the
limb into portable pieces, I concealed the whole in an adjoining
plantation.

Notwithstanding the lights in the windows evinced that the inmates had
not yet retired to rest, I sauntered over every part of the lawn, and
at last walked directly up to the drawing-room window. The blind was
down, but the shutters unclosed. By stooping close to the ground, and
peeping beneath the blind, I could survey the whole room.

Here were two daughters and their father. The eldest was fast asleep
in an arm-chair; the younger one working, and their father, as usual
reading a volume of Sir Walter Scott, the well known binding of which
I at once recognised. I could not get a sight of his face, for the
book he held before him; but I saw his forehead and thin silvery hair.

What was now my surprise, to hear a carriage, at this time of the
night, driving towards the house! I instantly placed myself behind a