The above observations may apparently be wide of the subject; but still there must be some link of association between them and what is to follow, as they naturally occurred to my mind when considering how I could best tell the events which are about to be related. Perhaps it was that I thought it somewhat strange that, at the very moment when the conversation took place which has been detailed in the last chapter, one of the personages therein mentioned was up to the neck, if I may so express it, in an adventure which, though trifling in itself, was destined, like many another trifle, to work a great effect on the destinies of many. It was a beautiful evening, then, about the twenty-seventh of May. The spring had been somewhat rainy and boisterous, and the few preceding days, though clear, had been cold, especially towards the afternoon; but it would seem that Winter had puffed forth his last blast, for the summer had got full possession of the day, and held it to the end. The birds, which had been nearly silent on the twenty-sixth, were now in full song; the wild-flowers starred the wood-walks and the banks; and if a cloud came over the blue sky, it was as soft and fleecy as a lamb's first coat. Under this summer heaven there was a very beautiful lane--an English country road--running between two banks, on the top of each of which, keeping parallel with the road, was a paling, above which again spread the arms of tall trees, holding their broad leafy fans over the head of the traveller below. By the distance of the bolls of the old elms and beeches from the fence which guarded them, it appeared as if there was a good broad walk within the boundary; and when the banks, at the end of a quarter of a mile, slanted down so as to bring the paling nearly on a level with the lane, that walk might be seen, together with a view over the well-rolled gravel, to a green and shady park dotted with fallow deer. Coming down the lane was a carrier's cart with the drag on, for there was a somewhat steep descent, and the road was as smooth as a ball-room floor; and at the bottom of the hill where the carrier stopped to remove the shoe was a gentleman, who also paused, and asked him some questions.