are, so that the leap was far more perilous than was
anticipated. Unconscious of this additional obstacle, the rider set off
in a canter. The banker was high in air, his loins bent back, his rein
slackened, his right hand raised knowingly--when the horse took fright
at an object crouched by the haystack--swerved, plunged midway into
the ditch, and pitched its rider two or three yards over its head. The
banker recovered himself sooner than might have been expected; and,
finding himself, though bruised and shaken, still whole and sound,
hastened to his horse. But the poor animal had not fared so well as its
master, and its off-shoulder was either put out or dreadfully
sprained. It had scrambled its way out of the ditch, and there it
stood disconsolate by the hedge, as lame as one of the trees that, at
irregular intervals, broke the symmetry of the barrier. On ascertaining
the extent of his misfortune, the banker became seriously uneasy; the
rain increased--he was several miles yet from home--he was in the midst
of houseless fields, with another leap before him--the leap he had just
passed behind--and no other egress that he knew of into the main road.
While these thoughts passed through his brain, he became suddenly aware
that he was not alone. The dark object that had frightened his horse
rose slowly from the snug corner it had occupied by the haystack, and
a gruff voice that made the banker thrill to the marrow of his bones,
cried, "Holla, who the devil are you?"

Lame as his horse was, the banker instantly put his foot into the
stirrup; but before he could mount, a heavy gripe was laid on his
shoulder--and turning round with as much fierceness as he could assume,
he saw--what the tone of the voice had already led him to forebode--the
ill-omened and cut-throat features of Luke Darvil.

"Ha! ha! my old annuitant, my clever feelosofer--jolly old boy--how
are you?--give us a fist. Who would have thought to meet you on a
rainy night, by a lone haystack, with a deep ditch on one side, and
no chimney-pot within sight? Why, old fellow, I, Luke Darvil,--I, the
vagabond--I whom you would have sent to the treadmill for being poor,
and calling on my own daughter--I am as rich as you are here--and as
great, and as strong, and as powerful."

And while he spoke, Darvil, who was really an undersized man, seemed to
swell and dilate, till he appeared half a head taller than the shrinking
banker, who was five feet eleven inches without