, and my mare is none of the best, I'll wish
you good morning." With these words Thornton put spurs to his horse and
trotted off.

"Who the devil have you got there, Pelham?" said Lord Chester.

"A person," said I, "who picked me up at Paris, and insists on the right
of treasure trove to claim me in England. But will you let me ask, in my
turn, whom that cheerful mansion we have just left, belongs to?"

"To a Mr. Dawson, whose father was a gentleman farmer who bred horses,
a very respectable person, for I made one or two excellent bargains with
him. The son was always on the turf, and contracted the worst of its
habits. He bears but a very indifferent character, and will probably
become a complete blackleg. He married, a short time since, a woman of
some fortune, and I suppose it is her taste which has so altered and
modernized his house. Come, gentlemen, we are on even ground, shall we
trot?"

We proceeded but a few yards before we were again stopped by a
precipitous ascent, and as Lord Chester was then earnestly engaged in
praising his horse to one of the cavalcade, I had time to remark the
spot. At the foot of the hill we were about slowly to ascend, was a
broad, uninclosed patch of waste land; a heron, flapping its enormous
wings as it rose, directed my attention to a pool overgrown with rushes,
and half-sheltered on one side by a decayed tree, which, if one might
judge from the breadth and hollowness of its trunk, had been a refuge
to the wild bird, and a shelter to the wild cattle, at a time when such
were the only intruders upon its hospitality; and when the country, for
miles and leagues round, was honoured by as little of man's care and
cultivation as was at present the rank waste which still nourished its
gnarled and venerable roots. There was something remarkably singular and
grotesque in the shape and sinuosity of its naked and spectral branches:
two of exceeding length stretched themselves forth, in the very
semblance of arms held out in the attitude of supplication; and the bend
of the trunk over the desolate pond, the form of the hoary and blasted
summit, and the hollow trunk, half riven asunder in the shape of limbs,
seemed to favour the gigantic deception. You might have imagined it an
antediluvian transformation, or a daughter of the Titan race, preserving
in her metamorphosis her attitude of entreaty to the merciless Olympian.

This was the only tree visible; for a turn of the road and the
uneven