in the coach to the last inn. To her observations Hamilton made civil and assenting answers, but very short. They now arrived at Darlington, where miss to her great vexation found that they were to be joined by another traveller. This was a stout, hearty, plain man, who appeared to be a substantial farmer or a yeoman. He soon, however, informed the company he was a freeholder of Durham, and proceeded, in the usual style of vulgar loquacity, to open upon his own private affairs. He, it seems, farmed his own lands, and had two sons; one of whom, a stout young man, he was breeding up to husbandry: but the other, a poor puny lad, quite unfit for labour, therefore he was making him a _genus_, he was to be a great _scolard_; he was not more than seventeen years of age, and in two or three years more would be fit for the _varsity_; so Mister Syntax, our schoolmaster, tells me; and he is a _perdigious_ great _scolard_. From his own affairs, this communicative person, in the natural course, proceeded to those of his neighbours, mentioned many names, totally unknown to his fellow-travellers, but, at last, came to one lady, of whom they and most others had very often heard. Not being sparing in his strictures on combined profligacy and folly, or the connexions which these had formed, he observed, that he remembered her a very good, agreeable young woman. “But, ah! master, when women once begin going to the devil, they do not stop half way; first they are bashful and coy, and we must court them; but after men has once their own way, by jingo then they courts us, and are no more shamefaced.” Our hero could not controvert the observations of this sage, and almost smiled at (as he conceived) their applicability to his fair companion. Whether the lady perceived, or at least felt their appositeness, could not easily be discovered. She certainly did not blush but, perhaps, that might be partly from her original tuition at the boarding-school, and partly from having of late been totally disused to the suffusion. At Durham they only stopped to change horses. Before they reached Newcastle their fellow-traveller left Hamilton and Miss Dartwell to themselves. The lady began to resume the operations which the worthy freeholder had interrupted: Hamilton, as we have seen, was not insensible to the attractions of even this species of ladies, yet, at present, his imagination was so much engrossed by the charms of the lovely Miss Mortimer, that his senses were less alive to present objects. To Morpeth they were still alone, and the lady began to hope that her efforts would not be in vain. But as they arrived at the inn, whom should miss descry, at a window, but her old friend and favourite, captain Sycamore? Reversing her intended application of the proverb, about “a bird in hand,” she hastened from the coach, and with looks of the warmest affection, flew to her military instructor. Hamilton proceeded on his journey.--From Berwick