Descending the hill, I entered a green, seldom-trodden lane, which runs along at a hundred yards or two from its base, and parallel with its ridge. It was overshadowed by chestnut-trees, and bordered with the prevalent barberry-bush, and between ran the track,--the beaten path of the horses' feet, and the even way of either wheel, with green strips between. It was a very lonely lane, and very pleasant in the warm, declining sun; and, following it a third of a mile, I came to a place that was familiar to me when I was a child, as the residence of a country cousin whom I used to be brought to see. There was his old house still standing, but deserted, with all the windows boarded up, and the door likewise, and the chimneys removed,--a most desolate-looking place. A young dog came barking towards me as I approached,--barking, but frisking, between play and watchfulness. Within fifty yards of the old house, farther back from the road, stands a stone house, of some dozen or twenty years' endurance,--an ugly affair, so plain is it,--which was built by the old man in his latter days. The well of the old house, out of which I have often drunk, and over the curb of which I have peeped to see my own boy-visage closing the far vista below, seems to be still in use for the new edifice. Passing on a little farther, I came to a brook, which, I remember, the old man's son and I dammed up, so that it almost overflowed the road. The stream has strangely shrunken now; it is a mere ditch, indeed, and almost a dry one. Going a little farther, I came to a graveyard by the roadside,--not apparently a public graveyard, but the resting-place of a family or two, with half a dozen gravestones. On two marble stones, standing side by side, I read the names of Benjamin Foster and Anstiss Foster, the people whom I used to be brought to visit. He had died in 1824, aged seventy-five; she in 1837, aged seventy. * * * * * A young woman in England, poisoned by an East Indian barbed dart, which her brother had brought home as a curiosity. * * * * *