“Well, I never!” thought George. “The first nob in the country going to shoe a horse,” but with his rustic delicacy he said nothing, and led Mr. Winchester to the blacksmith's shop. While this young gentleman is hammering nails into a horse's hoof, and Australia into an English farmer's mind, we must introduce other personages. Susanna Merton was beautiful and good. George Fielding and she were acknowledged lovers, but marriage was not spoken of as a near event, and latterly old Merton had seemed cool whenever his daughter mentioned the young man's name. Susanna appeared to like George, though not so warmly as he loved her; but at all events she accepted no other proffers of love. For all that she had, besides a host of admirers, other lovers besides George; and what is a great deal more singular (for a woman's eye is quick as lightning in finding out who loves her), there was more than one of whose passion she was not conscious. William Fielding, George's brother, was in love with his brother's sweetheart, but though he trembled with pleasure when she was near him, he never looked at her except by stealth; he knew he had no business to love her. On the morning of our tale Susan's father, old Merton, had walked over from his farm to “The Grove,” and was inspecting a field behind George's house, when he was accosted by his friend, Mr. Meadows, who had seen him, and giving his horse to a boy to hold had crossed the stubbles to speak to him. Mr. Meadows was not a common man, and merits some preliminary notice. He was what is called in the country “a lucky man”; everything he had done in life had prospered. The neighbors admired, respected, and some of them even hated this respectable man, who had been a carter in the midst of them, and now at forty years of age was a rich corn-factor and land-surveyor. “All this money cannot have been honestly got,” said the envious ones among themselves; yet they could not put their finger on any dishonest action he had done. To the more candid the known qualities of the man accounted for his life of success. This John Meadows had a cool head, an iron will, a body and mind alike indefatigable, and an eye never diverted from the great objects of sober industrious men--wealth and respectability. He had also the soul of business--method! At one hour he was sure to be at church; at another, at market; in his office at a third, and at home when respectable men should be at home. By this means Mr. Meadows was always to be found by any man who wanted to do business; and when you had found him, you found a man superficially coy perhaps, but at bottom always ready to do business, and equally sure to get the sunny side of it and give you the windy.