ing, Mary Hall,
musical and handsome, Annie Condell, modest and benevolent, Joyce Acton,
witty and aristocratic, Lizzie Heminge, bouncing and beaming, Fannie Hunt,
stately and kind, while Anne Hathaway, the big girl of the party, seemed to
be the leader in all the innocent mischief of the evening.

William took a particular liking to the push and go of Anne, and she seemed
to concentrate her gaze on his robust form at first sight. William asked
me, as the friend of the family, to introduce him to Miss Hathaway, which I
did in my best words, and away they went, on a hop, step and a jump through
the Morris dance that was just then being enacted on the lawn.

The clarion notes of the farm cocks were saluting the rosy footsteps of the
dawn when the various parties dispersed for home.

The last I saw of William he was helping Miss Hathaway over the rustic
stile and hedge row that rimmed the old thatched cottage home of his new
found flame.

It was a frigid day or night when William could not find something fresh
and new among the fair sex, and like a king bee in a field of wild flowers,
he sipped the nectar of love and beauty, and tossed carking care to the
vagrant winds.

It was soon after this moonlight party that a picnic revel was given in the
domain of Sir Hugh Clopton, near the old mill and stone bridge erected by
that generous public benefactor.

The boys and girls of the town turned out _en masse_, and enjoyed the
hawking, hunting, swimming, dancing, archery and boating that prevailed
that day.

In the midst of the festivities, while a long line of rural beauties and
beaux were prancing and rollicking on the bridge, a scream, and a flash of
Dolly Varden dress in the river showed the struggling efforts of Anne
Hathaway to keep her head above water.

One glance at the pride of his heart struggling for her life determined the
soul of the athlete, when he plunged into the running stream, caught the
arm of his adored as she was going down for the third time, and then with a
few mighty sweeps of his brawny arm, he reached the shore and heaved her on
the sands in an almost lifeless condition. She was soon restored, however,
by her numerous companions, with only the loss of a few ribbons and bunches
of hawthorn blossoms that William had tied in her golden hair that morning.

William was the hero of the day, and his fame for bravery rung on the lips
of the Warwickshire yeomanry, while in the heart of Anne Hathaway de