, by break of day. But you say, 'if he ever reached
Yorkshire,'--What should prevent him?"

"His health!" said the non-hypochondriac, "I should not be greatly
surprised if--if--In short you had better look at the grave-stones by
the way, for the name of Clarke."

"Perhaps you can give me the dates, Sir," said Walter, somewhat cast
down from his elation.

"Ay! I'll see, I'll see, after dinner; the commonness of the name has
its disadvantages now. Poor Geoffrey!--I dare say there are fifty tombs,
to the memory of fifty Clarkes, between this and York. But come, Sir,
there's the dinner-bell."

Whatever might have been the maladies entailed upon the portly frame
of Mr. Courtland by the vegetable life of the departed trees, a want of
appetite was not among the number. Whenever a man is not abstinent from
rule, or from early habit, as in the case of Aram, Solitude makes its
votaries particularly fond of their dinner. They have no other event
wherewith to mark their day--they think over it, they anticipate it,
they nourish its soft idea with their imagination; if they do look
forward to any thing else more than dinner, it is--supper!

Mr. Courtland deliberately pinned the napkin to his waistcoat, ordered
all the windows to be thrown open, and set to work like the good Canon
in Gil Blas. He still retained enough of his former self, to preserve an
excellent cook; so far at least as the excellence of a she-artist goes;
and though most of his viands were of the plainest, who does not
know what skill it requires to produce an unexceptionable roast, or a
blameless boil? Talk of good professed cooks, indeed! they are plentiful
as blackberries: it is the good, plain cook, who is the rarity!

Half a tureen of strong soup; three pounds, at least, of stewed carp;
all the under part of a sirloin of beef; three quarters of a tongue;
the moiety of a chicken; six pancakes and a tartlet, having severally
disappeared down the jaws of the invalid,

"Et cuncta terrarum subacta
Praeter atrocem animum Catonis,"

[And everything of earth subdued,
except the resolute mind of Cato.]

he still called for two deviled biscuits and an anchovy!

When these were gone, he had the wine set on a little table by the
window, and declared that the air seemed closer than ever. Walter was
no longer surprised at the singular nature of the nonhypochondriac's
complaint.

Walter declined the bed that Mr. Courtland offered h