It was a moonlight night. The scene a flat country, with a monotonous row of poplars crossing it. This long file of formal trees marks the line of a canal, fronting which at a distance of about a hundred yards stands a lonely brick house, with a few sombre elms rising near it; a light mist hung upon this expansive flat. The soil must have been unproductive, so few farmsteads were visible for miles around. Here and there pools of water glimmered coldly in the moonlight; and patches of rushes and reeds made the fields look ragged and neglected. Here and there, too, a stunted hedge-row showed dimly along the level, otherwise unbroken, and stretching away into the haze of the horizon. It is a raw and dismal landscape, where a murder might be done, and the scream lose itself in distance unheard--where the highwayman, secure from interruption, might stop and plunder the chance wayfarer at his leisure--a landscape which a fanciful painter would flank with a distant row of gibbets. The front of this square brick house, with a little enclosure, hardly two yards in depth, and a wooden paling in front, and with a green moss growing damply on the piers and the door-steps, and tinging the mortar between the bricks, looks out upon a narrow old road, along which just then were audible the clink and rattle of an approaching carriage and horses. It was past one o'clock. No hospitable light shone from the windows, which on the contrary looked out black and dreary upon the vehicle and steaming horses which pulled up in front of the house. Out got Cleve and reconnoitred. "Are you quite sure?" "Clay Parsonage--yes, sir," said the driver. Cleve shook the little wooden gate, which was locked; so he climbed the paling, and knocked and rang loud and long at the hall-door. The driver at last reported a light in an upper window. Cleve went on knocking and ringing, and the head of the Rev. Isaac Dixie appeared high in the air over the window-stool. "What do you want, pray?" challenged that suave clergyman from his sanctuary. "It's I--Cleve Verney. Why do you go to bed at such hours? I must see you for a moment." "Dear me! my dear, valued pupil! Who could have dreamed?--I shall be down in one moment." "Thanks--I'll wait;" and then to the driver he said--"I shan't stay five minutes; mind, you're ready to start with me the moment I return." Now the hall-door opened. The Rev. Isaac Dixie--for his dress was a compromise between modesty and extreme haste, and necessarily very imperfect--stood in greater part behind the hall-door; a bed-room candlestick in his fingers, smiling blandly on his "distinguished pupil," who entered without a smile, without a greeting--merely saying:-- "Where shall we sit down for a minute, old Dixie?" Holding his hand with the candle in it across, so as to keep his flowing dressing-gown together; and with much wonder and some misgivings, yet contriving his usual rosy smile, he conducted his unexpected visitor into his "study."