Thus passed the remaining hours of their journey--Burrel every moment increasing upon the esteem of his travelling companion, till at length they approached, about six o'clock, a little village, which, though it may bear a different name in the county map, we shall take the liberty of calling Emberton. The sun had so far declined from the meridian, that the shadows were getting long and blue; but still the sheeny splendour of the summer's day was not at all decreased, though the approach of evening had cleared away the hazy brightness which hangs ever about a very hot and sunny noon. The coach wound on along the road, every now and then passing various objects which gave notice that it was approaching some place where the busy and improving emmets that lord it over this ant-hill world, had congregated together, and adorned their place of sojourn. Now came a neat gate and a detached cottage, too miniature in all its proportions, from the little turkey-carpet garden to the rustic porch, to be the country mansion of any man of large property; and yet too neat, and one might perhaps say too elegant, to be the dwelling of the poor. It was evidently the house of the doctor or the lawyer, or the retired maiden lady of some village near at hand, and it again was succeeded by a long clean whitewashed wall, belonging to garden, or shrubbery, or semi-park, between which and the coach road ran a fair gravel footpath, defended by green posts and iron chains. The manifold paths and roads branching to the right and left, clean and well kept, told the same tale of man's habitation; and in a moment after, winding over a slight rise, the coach reached the brow of the hill from which the whole village or little town of Emberton was visible.