After having undergone the visit of the surgeon, Burrel, as we have stated, changed his dress; and, having given some directions to his servant, strolled out alone upon an expedition, in which it may be necessary to follow him. Crossing the bridge--upon which he paused for a moment to gaze up the long vista of the park--he proceeded to the extremity of the wall which formed the enclosure, and then turning through a shady lane, formed by that boundary on one side, and a steep bank and hedge on the other, he strolled on with an air of absent thoughtfulness, that made more than one milkmaid, whom he met returning with her brimful pails from the neighbouring fields, conclude, with the true sentimentality of a Molly, that "the gentleman must be in love!" Sad, however, to say, Burrel was not the least in love in the world; and though of a somewhat enthusiastic and Quixotical character, he would probably have been obliged, like the hero of La Mancha himself, to think some time before he could possibly have discovered any one in the sphere of his acquaintance, whom he would have considered worthy of the honour and the trouble of falling in love with. Still more melancholy to relate, so far from any fair image filling his mind with dreams ambrosial, and making him stumble over the stones in his way, he was at that moment thinking of money--base, unwholesome money. His meditations were of Cocker; and many a sum, both of addition, multiplication, and subtraction, together with various computations of interest, and now and then a remote flash of vulgar fractions, passed across his mind, in all of which he displayed a talent for accounts somewhat more clear and accurate than that of Joseph Hume, thank God--though not quite so neat and rapid as that of ever-lamented Windham. Thus he walked along under the wall of the park till the park wall ended, and then taking a narrow and overhanging road, which descended into a sweet wild valley--through which a brook meandered on, till it lost itself in the sands upon the sea-shore, about five miles to the east--he proceeded on his way without doubt or question, as if he had known the whole country from his boyhood. The opposite bank of the valley was thickly covered with trees and shrubs; and about half a mile from the spot where the road entered it, the summit of what seemed a tall old-fashioned farmhouse, of cold grey stone, rose above this sort of verdant screen. Within a few hundred yards of this building, the road climbed the bank, and passed before the door, which was painted of a bluish gray, like that of a French country house, and offered an aspect of untidiness and discomfort, not often seen in an English dwelling. No roses decorated the porch, no clematis festooned the windows; stone walls surrounded that which was, or had been intended for, a garden; and the gruntings and squeaks which echoed from within that boundary, spoke the character of the domestic animals chiefly cultivated at Ryebury.