a few carts, laden with farm-produce or manure, crept lazily along it; now and then a carrier's wagon, drawn by a heavily-trotting horse with bells on his collar, jolted by, or the trap of a town-traveller returning from the home-circuit, driven by an ill-dressed hobbledehoy with the traveller nodding by his side, and the black-leather apron strapped over the back seat, to make the trap look as much like a phaeton as possible, rattled townward. But when in obedience to the directions on a finger-post, Mr. Scadgers turned out of the high-road up a long winding lane, fringed on either side by high hedges, on which "Autumn's fiery finger" had been laid only to increase their beauty a thousand-fold, where not a sound broke the stillness save his own footfall and the occasional chirping of the birds, he seemed for the first time to awake to the beauty of the scene. Climbing to the top bar of a gate in the hedge on the top of a little eminence, he seated himself, took off the big hat, mopped himself violently with the red-silk handkerchief, and looked round on the panorama of meadow and woodland, with tiny silver threads of water here and there interspersed, until his heart softened and he had occasion to rub the silver head of the ruler-like stick into his eyes. "Lor' bless me!" he muttered to himself; "it's like Yorkshire, and yet prettier than that; softer and quieter like. More than twenty years since I've seen any thing like this. And poor Ann! Daisy-chains we used to make in Fairlow's mead, just like that field there, when we was little children; daisy-chains and buttercups, and--poor Ann! And to think what I'm now a-goin' to--Lord help us! well, it _is_ a rum world!" with which sage though incoherent reflections Mr. Scadgers resumed the big hat, dismounted from the gate, and continued his walk.