sir?" said Harrison; "it is past
one."

"Yes; yet stay: the day is fine; I will ride; let the carriage come on
in the evening; see that my horse is saddled; you looked to his mash
last night?"

"I did, sir. He seems wonderfully fresh: would you please to have me
stay here with the carriage, sir, till the groom comes on with the other
horse?"

"Ay, do: I don't know yet how far strange servants may be welcome where
I am going."

"Now, that's lucky!" said Harrison to himself, as he shut the door: "I
shall have a good five hours' opportunity of making my court here. Miss
Elizabeth is really a very pretty girl, and might not be a bad match. I
don't see any brothers; who knows but she may succeed to the inn--hem! A
servant may be ambitious as well as his master, I suppose."

So meditating, Harrison sauntered to the stables; saw (for he was an
admirable servant, and could, at a pinch, dress a horse as well as its
master) that Clarence's beautiful steed received the utmost nicety of
grooming which the ostler could bestow; led it himself to the door; held
the stirrup for his master, with the mingled humility and grace of his
profession, and then strutted away--"pride on his brow and glory in his
eye"--to be the cynosure and oracle of the taproom.

Meanwhile Linden rode slowly onwards. As he passed that turn of the town
by which he had for the first time entered it, the recollection of the
eccentric and would-be gypsy flashed upon him. "I wonder," thought
he, "where that singular man is now, whether he still preserves his
itinerant and woodland tastes,--

'Si flumina sylvasque inglorius amet,'
["If, unknown to fame, he love the streams and the woods."]

or whether, as his family increased in age or number, he has turned from
his wanderings, and at length found out 'the peaceful hermitage?' How
glowingly the whole scene of that night comes across me,--the wild
tents, their wilder habitants, the mingled bluntness, poetry, honest
good-nature, and spirit of enterprise which constituted the chief's
nature; the jovial meal and mirth round the wood fire, and beneath the
quiet stars, and the eagerness and zest with which I then mingled in the
merriment. Alas! how ill the fastidiousness and refinement of after days
repay us for the elastic, buoyant, ready zeal with which our first youth
enters into whatever is joyous, without pausing to ask if its cause and
nature be congenial to our habits or kindred to our tastes. After a