distance, the gray church-tower emerged from the surrounding masses of
solemn foliage. Suddenly the road curves round, and straight before her
(the rooks cawing above the turrets, the sun reflected from the vanes)
Lucretia gazes on the halls of Laughton. And didst thou not, O Guy's
oak, murmur warning from thine oracular hollows? And thou who sleepest
below the church-tower, didst thou not turn, Miles St. John, in thy
grave, when, with such tender care, the young lord of Laughton bore that
silent guest across his threshold, and with credulous, moistened eyes,
welcomed Treason and Murder to his hearth?

There, at the porch, paused Helen, gazing with the rapt eye of the
poetess on the broad landscape, checkered by the vast shadows cast
from the setting sun. There, too, by her side lingered Varney, with an
artist's eye for the stately scene, till a thought, not of art, changed
the face of the earth, and the view without mirrored back the Golgotha
of his soul.

Leave them thus; we must hurry on.

One day a traveller stopped his gig at a public-house in a village
in Lancashire. He chucked the rein to the hostler, and in reply to a
question what oats should be given to the horse, said, "Hay and water;
the beast is on job." Then sauntering to the bar, he called for a glass
of raw brandy for himself; and while the host drew the spirit forth from
the tap, he asked carelessly if some years ago a woman of the name of
Joplin had not resided in the village.

"It is strange," said the host, musingly. "What is strange?"

"Why, we have just had a gent asking the same question. I have only
been here nine year come December; but my old hostler was born in the
village, and never left it. So the gent had in the hostler, and he is
now gone into the village to pick up what else he can learn."

This intelligence seemed to surprise and displease the traveller.

"What the deuce!" he muttered; "does Jason mistrust me? Has he set
another dog on the scent? Humph!" He drained off his brandy, and sallied
forth to confer with the hostler.

"Well, my friend," said Mr. Grabman,--for the traveller was no other
than that worthy,--"well, so you remember Mrs. Joplin more than twenty
years ago, eh?"

"Yees, I guess; more than twenty years since she left the pleck
[Lancashire and Yorkshire synonym for place]."

"Ah, she seems to have been a restless body. She had a child with her?"

"Yees, I moind that."

"And I dare say you heard her say the