PARSON (no less positively).--"I should say just the contrary. Its tone is too serene, and its style too simple for a young man. Besides, I don't know any young man who would send me his book, and this book has been sent me--very handsomely bound too, you see. Depend upon it, Moss is the man--quite his turn of mind." MRS. DALE.--"You are too provoking, Charles dear! Mr. Moss is so remarkably plain, too." RANDAL.--"Must an author be handsome?" PARSON.--"Ha, ha! Answer that, if you can, Carry." Carry remained mute and disdainful. SQUIRE (with great _naivete_).--"Well, I don't think there's much in the book, whoever wrote it; for I've read it myself, and understand every word of it." MRS. DALE.--"I don't see why you should suppose it was written by a man at all. For my part, I think it must be a woman." MRS. HAZELDEAN.--"Yes, there's a passage about maternal affection, which only a woman could have written." PARSON.--"Pooh, pooh! I should like to see a woman who could have written that description of an August evening before a thunderstorm; every wildflower in the hedgerow exactly the flowers of August--every sign in the air exactly those of the month. Bless you! a woman would have filled the hedge with violets and cowslips. Nobody else but my friend Moss could have written that description." SQUIRE.--"I don't know; there's a simile about the waste of corn-seed in hand-sowing, which makes me think he must be a farmer!" MRS. DALE (scornfully).--"A farmer! In hob-nailed shoes, I suppose! I say it is a woman." MRS. HAZELDEAN.--"A WOMAN, and A MOTHER!" PARSON.--"A middle-aged man, and a naturalist." SQUIRE.--"No, no, Parson; certainly a young man; for that love-scene puts me in mind of my own young days, when I would have given my ears to tell Harry how handsome I thought her; and all I could say was--'Fine weather for the crops, Miss.' Yes, a young man, and a farmer. I should not wonder if he had held the plow himself." RANDAL (who had been turning over the pages).--"This sketch of night in London comes from a man who has lived the life of cities, and looked at wealth with the eyes of poverty. Not bad! I will read the book." "Strange," said the Parson, smiling, "that this little work should so have entered our minds, suggested to all of us different ideas, yet equally charmed all--given a new and fresh current to our dull country life--animated us as with the sight of a world in our breasts we had never seen before, save in dreams;--a little work like this, by a man we don't know, and never may! Well, _that_ knowledge _is_ power, and a noble one!" "A sort of power, certainly, sir," said Randal, candidly; and that night, when Randal retired to his own room, he suspended his schemes and projects, and read, as he rarely did, without an object to gain by the reading.