might find the most free from competing rivals. Merle
willingly agreed to accompany George in quest of the wanderer, whom,
by the help of his crystal, he seemed calmly sure he could track and
discover. Accordingly, they both set out in the somewhat devious and
desultory road which Merle, who had some old acquaintances amongst the
ancient profession of hawkers, had advised Waife to take. But Merle,
unhappily confiding more in his crystal than Waife's steady adherence
to the chart prescribed, led the Oxford scholar the life of a
will-of-the-wisp; zigzag, and shooting to and fro, here and there, till,
just when George had lost all patience, Merle chanced to see, not in
the crystal, a pelerine on the neck of a farmer's daughter, which he
was morally certain he had himself selected for Waife's pannier. And
the girl stating in reply to his inquiry that her father had bought that
pelerine as a present for her, not many days before, of a pedlar in a
neighbouring town, to the market of which the farmer resorted weekly,
Merle cast an horary scheme, and finding the Third House (of short
journeys) in favourable aspect to the Seventh House (containing the
object desired), and in conjunction with the Eleventh House (friends),
he gravely informed the scholar that their toils were at an end, and
that the Hour and the Man were at hand. Not over-sanguine, George
consigned himself and the seer to an early train, and reached the
famous town of Oazelford, whither, when the chronological order of our
narrative (which we have so far somewhat forestalled) will permit, we
shall conduct the inquisitive reader.

Meanwhile Lionel, subscribing without a murmur to Lady Montfort's
injunction to see Sophy no more till Darrell had been conferred with
and his consent won, returned to his lodgings in London, sanguine of
success, and flushed with joy. His intention was to set out at once to
Fawley; but on reaching town he found there a few lines from Dairell
himself, in reply to a long and affectionate letter which Lionel
had written a few days before asking permission to visit the old
manor-house; for amidst all his absorbing love for Sophy, the image of
his lonely benefactor in that gloomy hermitage often rose before him.
In these lines, Darrell, not unkindly, but very peremptorily, declined
Lionel's overtures.

"In truth, my dear young kinsman," wrote the recluse--"in truth I
am, with slowness, and with frequent relapses, labouring through
convalesce