“They 're something silent all of them, but Lizzy is a nice girl and very pretty,--at least she was when I saw her here two years ago.” “At all events, they are distant connections of your mother's; and as you are determined to live on your relations, I think you ought to give them a turn.” “There is some justice in that, sir,” said I, determined now to resent no rudeness, nor show offence at any coarseness, however great it might be. “Well, then, I 'll write to-morrow, and say you 'll follow my letter, and be with them soon after they receive it. I believe it's a lonely sort of place enough,--Dan calls it next door to Greenland; but there's good air, and plenty of it.” We talked for some time longer over the family whose guest I was to be, and I went off to bed, determined to see out this new act of my life's drama before I whistled for the curtain to drop. It gave a great additional interest besides to my journey to have overheard the hint my aunt threw out about a marriage. It was something more than a mere journey for change of air. It might be a journey to change the whole character and fortune of my life. And was it not thus one's fate ever turned? You went somewhere by a mere accident, or you stopped at home. You held a hand to help a lady into a boat, or you assisted her off her horse, or you took her in to dinner; and out of something insignificant and trivial as this your whole life's destiny was altered. And not alone your destiny, but your very nature; your temper, as fashioned by another's temper; your tastes as moulded by others' tastes; and your morality, your actual identity, was the sport of a casualty too small and too poor to be called an incident. “Is this about to be the turning-point in my life?” asked I of myself. “Is Fortune at last disposed to bestow a smile upon me? Is it out of the very depth of my despair I 'm to catch sight of the first gleam of light that has fallen upon my luckless career?” CHAPTER II. THE REV. DAN DUDGEON. My plan of procedure was to be this. I was supposed to be making a tour in Ireland, when, hearing of certain connections of my mother's family living in Donegal, I at once wrote to my uncle Morse for an introduction to them, and he not only provided me with a letter accrediting me, but wrote by the same post to the Dudgeons to say I was sure to pay them a visit. On arriving in Dublin I was astonished to find so much that seemed unlike what I had left behind me. That intense preoccupation, that anxious eager look of business so remarkable in Liverpool, was not to be found here. If the people really were busy, they went about their affairs in a half-lounging, half-jocular humor, as though they wouldn't be selling hides, or shipping pigs, or landing sugar hogsheads, if they had anything else to do,--as if trade was a dirty necessity, and the only thing was to get through with it with as little interruption as possible to the pleasanter occupations of life.