“I have for some time been aware of your return to your native land, having heard of you from mutual friends. Pray, when your avocations will allow of your leaving London, endeavour to visit my retirement. I have a small room in my cottage at your service, and shall enjoy great pleasure, in some respects a sorrowful one, in meeting you again, and in reviving old recollections of those days when first we became acquainted. I will reserve all further communications till we meet; in the meantime am, “My dear Captain Gernon, “Yours most truly, “A. BELFIELD.” “To Brev. Capt. Gernon, “5, Peppercorn-buildings, “Pimlico.” I was not long in finding out Miss Belfield’s retreat. The Highflyer coach dropped me at the Bull, a foaming, rampant fellow, the only thing evincing any signs of life and animation in the small sleepy village of Swines-Norton, in ——shire. A few smock-frocked clowns, a bandy-legged ostler, and a recruiting-sergeant, who seemed wofully out of his element, loitered in front of the little inn as I descended. “What luggage had you, sir?” “Nothing but a small carpet-bag.” “Come, Bill, bear a hand, and get the gentleman’s bag out of the hind boot.” The bandy-legged ostler soon disengaged my property; the spruce bluff coachman clutched his reins and cracked his whip, and made the over-frisky off-leader dance a saraband. “Has Davy brought up that there black mare?” said the landlord, sauntering out with his pipe and tankard of half-and-half. “Yes; he’s down there along o’ Tom at the Blackbird.” All right—crack—whisp—a nod to the pretty chambermaid at the window—ya-hip! and away bowled the Highflyer, leaving me “alone in my glory,” saving and except the drowsy specimens of humanity afore-mentioned. “Can you tell me where a lady named Miss Belfield resides?” “Miss Bulfield—Miss Bulfield—be that she, Jem, as lives furder end o’ Tinker-pot-lane?” “The lady, I mean,” said I, “returned from India some years ago, and resides in something cottage, but I have forgotten the name.” “All right, sir, that’s she—now you mentions the Heast Hinjies. I knows she’ve a-got a parrotkeet—jist go on to the church, and then turn to your right hand, and keep straight on as ever you can go ’til you comes to a lane; when you be at the top o’ that, get over the stile and go across the footpath till you comes to the furder end o’ the field, and then anybody’ll tell you where Myrtle Cottage is.” “Thank you, my man,” said I.