the features of an old friend, whom you have not seen these forty years.’--The gentleman, taking him by the hand, and gazing at him earnestly,--‘I protest (cried he), I do think I recall the idea of Matthew Loyd of Glamorganshire, who was student of Jesus.’ ‘Well remembered, my dear friend, Charles Dennison (exclaimed my uncle, pressing him to his breast), I am that very identical Matthew Loyd of Glamorgan.’ Clinker, who had just entered the room with some coals for the fire, no sooner heard these words, than throwing down the scuttle on the toes of Lismahago, he began to caper as if he was mad, crying--‘Matthew Loyd of Glamorgan!--O Providence!--Matthew Loyd of Glamorgan!’--Then, clasping my uncle’s knees, he went on in this manner--‘Your worship must forgive me--Matthew Loyd of Glamorgan!--O Lord, Sir! I can’t contain myself!--I shall lose my senses’--‘Nay, thou hast lost them already, I believe (said the ‘squire, peevishly), prithee, Clinker, be quiet--What is the matter?’--Humphry, fumbling in his bosom, pulled out an old wooden snuff-box, which he presented in great trepidation to his master, who, opening it immediately, perceived a small cornelian seal, and two scraps of paper--At sight of these articles he started, and changed colour, and casting his eye upon the inscriptions--‘Ha!--how!--what! where (cried he) is the person here named?’ Clinker, knocking his own breast, could hardly pronounce these words--‘Here--here--here is Matthew Loyd, as the certificate sheweth--Humphry Clinker was the name of the farrier that took me ‘prentice’--‘And who gave you these tokens?’ said my uncle hastily--‘My poor mother on her death-bed’--replied the other--‘And who was your mother?’ ‘Dorothy Twyford, an please your honour, heretofore bar-keeper at the Angel at Chippenham.’--‘And why were not these tokens produced before?’ ‘My mother told me she had wrote to Glamorganshire, at the time of my birth, but had no answer; and that afterwards, when she made enquiry, there was no such person in that county.’ ‘And so in consequence of my changing my name and going abroad at that very time, thy poor mother and thou have been left to want and misery--I am really shocked at the consequence of my own folly.’--Then, laying his hand on Clinker’s head, he added, ‘Stand forth, Matthew Loyd--You see, gentlemen, how the sins of my youth rise up in judgment against me--Here is my direction written with my own hand, and a seal which I left at the woman’s request; and this is a certificate of the child’s baptism, signed by the curate of the parish.’ The company were not a little surprised at this discovery, upon which Mr Dennison facetiously congratulated both the father and the son: for my part, I shook my new-found cousin heartily by the hand, and Lismahago complimented him with the tears in his eyes, for he had been hopping about the room, swearing in broad Scotch, and bellowing with the pain occasioned by the fall of the coalscuttle upon his foot.