d be more natural than that a gentleman of sixteen should select a
lady of fifty for his first essay in the tender passion? Still--Bethiah
McRankine!

I kept my countenance with an effort. "Mr. Rowley," said I, "if music be
the food of love, play on." And Mr. Rowley gave "The Girl I left behind
me," shyly at first, but anon with terrific expression. He broke off
with a sigh. "Heigho!" in fact, said Rowley: and started off again while
I tapped out the time, and hummed--

"But now I'm bound for Brighton camp,
Kind Heaven then pray guide me,
And send me safely back again
To the girl I left behind me!"

Thenceforward that not uninspiriting air became the _motif_ of our
progress. We never tired of it. Whenever our conversation flagged, by
tacit consent Mr. Rowley pieced his flageolet together and started it.
The horses lilted it out in their gallop: the harness jingled, the
postillions tittuped to it. And the _presto_ with which it wound up as
we came to a post-house and a fresh relay of horses had to be heard to
be believed.

So with the chaise windows open to the vigorous airs of spring, and my
own breast like a window flung wide to youth and health and happy
expectations, I rattled homewards; impatient as a lover should be, yet
not too impatient to taste the humour of spinning like a lord, with a
pocketful of money, along the road which the _ci-devant_ M. Champdivers
had so fearfully dodged and skirted in Burchell Fenn's covered cart.

And yet so impatient that when we galloped over the Calton Hill and
down into Edinburgh by the new London road, with the wind in our faces,
and a sense of April in it, brisk and jolly, I must pack off Rowley to
our lodgings with the valises, and stay only for a wash and breakfast at
Dumbreck's before posting on to Swanston alone.

"Whene'er my steps return that way,
Still faithful shall she find me,
And never more again I'll stray
From the girl I left behind me."

When the gables of the cottage rose into view over the hill's shoulder I
dismissed my driver and walked forward, whistling the tune; but fell
silent as I came under the lee of the garden wall, and sought for the
exact spot of my old escalade. I found it by the wide beechen branches
over the road, and hoisted myself noiselessly up to the coping where, as
before, they screened me--or would have screened me had I cared to wait.

But I did not care to wait; and why? Because, not fifteen yards f