e meal was scarce over, before a chaise and pair came to the door.

"You must not keep the chaise waiting--the gentleman is very punctual."

"But he is not come."

"No, he has walked on before, and will get in after you are out of the
town."

"What is his name, and why should he care for me, grandmother?"

"He will tell you himself. Now, come."

"But you will bless me again, grandmother? I love you already."

"I do bless you," said Mrs. Avenel firmly. "Be honest and good, and
beware of the first false step." She pressed his hand with a convulsive
grasp, and led him to the outer door.

The postboy clanked his whip, the chaise rattled off. Leonard put his
head out of the window to catch a last glimpse of the old woman. But the
boughs of the pollard oak, and its gnarled decaying trunk, hid her from
his eye. And look as he would, till the road turned, he saw but the
melancholy tree.

FOOTNOTES:

[K] This aphorism has been probably assigned to Lord Bacon upon the mere
authority of the index to his works. It is the aphorism of the
index-maker, certainly not of the great master of inductive philosophy.
Bacon has, it is true, repeatedly dwelt on the power of knowledge, but
with so many explanations and distinctions, that nothing could be more
unjust to his general meaning than to attempt to cramp into a sentence
what it costs him a volume to define. Thus, if in one page he appears to
confound knowledge with power, in another he sets them in the strongest
antithesis to each other; as follows, "Adeo, signanter Deus opera
potentiae et sapientiae discriminavit." But it would be as unfair to Bacon
to convert into an aphorism the sentence that discriminates between
knowledge and power as it is to convert into an aphorism any sentence
that confounds them.

[L] "But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or
misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge:--for men have
entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a
natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite: sometimes to entertain their
minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation;
and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and
most times for lucre and profession,"--(that is, for most of those
objects which are meant by the ordinary citers of the saying, 'Knowledge
is power;') "and seldom sincerely to give a true account of these gifts
of reason to the benefit and use of men; as if there we