"You return to the woods, sir," he said; "would that I could make up my mind to follow your example. This man, O'Brallaghan, however--" And Mr. Jinks completed his sentence by savagely clipping a piece of cloth with the huge shears he held, as though the enemy's neck were between them. Verty scarcely observed this irate movement. "I'll leave the clothes here," he said; "I'm going now--good-bye." And taking up his rifle, the young man went out, followed by Longears, who, to the last, bent his head over his shoulder, and gazed upon Mr. Jinks with curiosity and interest. Jinks, with a savage look at O'Brallaghan, was about to return to his work, when a letter, protruding from the pocket of the coat which Verty had just taken off, attracted his attention, and he pounced upon it without hesitation. Jinks had recognized the handwriting of Miss Sallianna in the address, and in an instant determined to use no ceremony. He tore it open, and read, with savage scowls and horrible contortions of the visage, that which follows. Unfortunate Jinks--reading private letters is a hazardous proceeding: and this was what the hero read: "BOWER OF NATURE, AT THE MATIN HOUR. "CHARMING, AND, ALAS! TOO DANGEROUS YOUNG MAN: "Since seeing thee, on yester eve, my feelings have greatly changed in intensity, and I fluctuate beneath an emotion of oblivious delight. Alas! we young, weak women, try in vain to obstruct the gurgling of the bosom; for I perceive that even I am not proof against the arrows of the god Diana. My heart has thrilled, my dearest friend, ever since you departed, yester eve, with a devious and intrinsic sensation of voluminous delight. The feelings cannot be concealed, but must be impressed in words; or, as the great Milton says, in his Bucoliks, the o'er-fraught heart would break! Love, my dear Mr. Verty, is contiguous--you cannot be near the beloved object without catching the contagion, and to this fact I distribute that flame which now flickers with intense conflagration in my bosom. Why, cruel member of the other sex! did you evade the privacy of our innocent and nocturnal retreat, turning the salubrious and maiden emotions of my bosom into agonizing delight and repressible tribulation! Could you not practice upon others the wiles of your intrinsic charms, and spare the weak Sallianna, whose only desire was to contemplate the beauties of nature in her calm retreat, where a small property sufficed for all her mundane necessities? Alas! but yester morn I was cheerful and invigorating--with a large criterion of animal spirits, and a bosom which had never sighed responsible to the flattering vows of beaux. But now!--ask me not how I feel, in thinking of _the person_ who has touched my indurate heart. Need I say that the individual in question has only to demand that heart, to have it detailed to him in all its infantile simplicity and diurnal self-reliance? Do not--do not--diffuse it!