Three chapters to one group of people is almost more than it is fair to allow; and yet the fact of there being three in the group, as well as a strong predilection on my own part for chronological progression, must excuse my remaining attached to Henry Hayley and his fair companions, at least till that day had reached its close. Now the period of a day's close may be differently estimated, according as a man is astronomical, Judaical, ecclesiastical, or chronological. Some will have it that sunset closes the day; some say midnight is the day's end--which, of course, is a contradiction in terms; some one hour, some another; but as men have never been agreed upon the subject since the beginning of the world, and I am decidedly fond of paradoxes, I prefer midnight, and therefore declare that, when I say "the close of the day," I mean neither more nor less than twelve o'clock at night. With a light and joyful step Henry Hayley took his way through the park where he had so often played in infancy and boyhood, towards one of the two lodges, selecting that one, the gates of which opened upon the road, near a little village, at which he had left the post-chaise that brought him from London. The moon, just risen and not far from the full, showed him many an old familiar sight; and the happiness of his own heart harmonized so well with the pleasant memories of the past that he almost fancied himself a boy again, and all the terrible realities of the last ten years nothing but a painful dream. There was one thing, indeed, which might have proved to him that it was not so--that there was a wide interval between the past and the present, and that was the sensation of passion. Yes, there was now passion in his bosom--passion which had not been there before--passion which even at the dawn of morning he had not felt.