The Indian leaf doth briefly burn; So doth man's strength to weakness turn The fire of youth extinguished quite, Comes age, like embers, dry and white. Think of this as you take tobacco.” * * [The lines here quoted belong to or were altered from a set of verses at one time very popular in England, beginning, _Tobacco that is withered quite._ In Scotland, the celebrated Ralph Erskine, author of the _Gospel Sonnets,_ published what he called “_Smoking Spiritualized,_ in two parts. The first part being an Old Meditation upon Smoking Tobacco.” It begins--* This Indian weed now withered quite, Tho' green at noon, cut down at night, Shows thy decay; All flesh is hay. Thus thank, and smoke tobacco.] I was much pleased with the gleams of sense and feeling which escaped from the Justice through the vapours of sloth and self-indulgence, assured him of my respect to his admonitions, and took a friendly farewell of the honest magistrate and his hospitable mansion. We found a repast prepared for us in the ante-room, which we partook of slightly, and rejoined the same servant of Sir Hildebrand who had taken our horses at our entrance, and who had been directed, as he informed Miss Vernon, by Mr. Rashleigh, to wait and attend upon us home. We rode a little way in silence, for, to say truth, my mind was too much bewildered with the events of the morning, to permit me to be the first to break it. At length Miss Vernon exclaimed, as if giving vent to her own reflections, “Well, Rashleigh is a man to be feared and wondered at, and all but loved; he does whatever he pleases, and makes all others his puppets--has a player ready to perform every part which he imagines, and an invention and readiness which supply expedients for every emergency.” “You think, then,” said I, answering rather to her meaning, than to the express words she made use of, “that this Mr. Campbell, whose appearance was so opportune, and who trussed up and carried off my accuser as a falcon trusses a partridge, was an agent of Mr. Rashleigh Osbaldistone's?” “I do guess as much,” replied Diana; “and shrewdly suspect, moreover, that he would hardly have appeared so very much in the nick of time, if I had not happened to meet Rashleigh in the hall at the Justice's.” “In that case, my thanks are chiefly due to you, my fair preserver.”