When you, Madam, took the road to Bath, I unattended crossed the country to Valmont castle. Three days I passed in reviving and rejecting the scheme; and during that time, had stationed myself at a farm-house within a mile of Valmont. In the farmer, I recognized an old school-fellow of my day's of humility; and one whom I loved dearly too, before my uncle was a nabob. We met each other with an appearance of restraint and embarrassment. I, certainly conscious of an unjust neglect of him: he, perhaps secretly despising the man who preferred wealth to honesty. But reparation was then in my power; and the very critical moment at hand. Farmer Richardson is rather given to endure than to complain. His simple statement of a few facts, which led to the service I rendered him, contained no invective. 'He told me he was an unfortunate man, to be sure; but Mr. Valmont was not obliged to know that.'--As to family concerns at the castle, after which I enquired, he said, 'he had occasionally heard more than he chose to relate. That the 'squire was perhaps proud and capricious, but he might have reasons for his conduct. Let every man act according to his own conscience, and the Lord have mercy on the greatest sinner.' Such is honest Richardson's creed. The farmer's taciturnity was amply contrasted by the loquacity of his hind, formerly a domestic at the castle, and suddenly discharged with that pride and petulance for which its owner is famed.--John Thomas dwelt at Valmont-castle when Clement Montgomery was adopted; when Miss Valmont was brought thither--and though I always made him begin there, he constantly found means to shift his ground to the ancient mysteries of the domain. 'A sinful lord, turned penitent, enjoined to find money and materials for the structure, it pleased a neighbouring society of devout fathers to erect on the rock within the park. It was further necessary to his salvation, that this hermitage should be endowed on two of the most holy monks of the brotherhood, who would undertake to live longest by prayer and fasting. The event proved the choice admirably founded. Without the adventitious aid of victuals and drink, they dwelt I know not what number of years in this practice of piety, saw the society from whence they came broken and dispersed, and peaceably ended their days in the hermitage.'--Selfish fellows though these saints, according to John Thomas; for, dead, they will not yield possession to the living, but Revisit still the glimpses of the moon Making night horrible. I essayed to gain information concerning Miss Valmont; and John Thomas's deduction from the little he had seen and the more he had heard was, that Miss had not a right understanding. He always thought Master Montgomery better natured of the two, and he would be a fine fortune when he came back from foreign countries.