I knew that it would be delivered at Craigaderyn on the morrow, and deemed that now twenty-four hours must be the utmost limit of Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle's sojourn in his present quarters, and in a sphere which he insulted by his presence; but three, four, even five days passed, and no reply came from Sir Madoc, who was then, though I knew it not, shooting with some friends in South Wales, and did not receive my epistle until it was somewhat late for him to act on it. During these intervening days I was in a species of fever. One Sunday I incidentally heard, at mess, that Lady Naseby's party, now a pretty numerous one, had been at service in the cathedral, and to hear the bishop preach. She had come in state, in the carriage, attended by several gentlemen on horseback, and two tall fellows in livery, one carrying her prayer-books, the other a long cane and huge nosegay; and there I might have met them all face to face, and seen Estelle once more, had my evil destiny not assigned to me the command of the main guard, and thus detained me in barracks; but Price of ours--susceptible as the Tupman of _Pickwick_--had seen her, and came to mess raving about her beauty. Every hour I could spare from duty was spent in hovering, like a spectre or a spy--an unquiet spirit certainly--in the vicinity of Walcot Park, till the lodge-keepers, who had been wont to touch their hats civilly at first, began ere long to view me with mistrust; and my horse knew every crook and turn of the Whitchurch-road quite as well as the way to his own stable. On the evening of the fifth day after I had written to Sir Madoc--a pleasant evening in the first days of September--I was again riding leisurely among the deep green lanes that border on Walcot Park, and which lay between dark green hedgerows then studded by scarlet dogberries, and the overarching branches of apple, pear, and damson trees, my heart, as usual, full of vague doubts, decided longings, and most undecided intentions, when I began slowly to walk my horse up a long, steep, and picturesque road, the vista of which was closed by an old village church, in the low and moss-grown wall surrounding which was a green wicket. It was on just such an evening as the last I have described, when the farewell gleam of the sun shone level along the fields, when the many-coloured foliage rustled in the gentle wind, and the voices of the blackbird, the thrush, and the lark came sweetly at times from the darkening copsewood, and when, as Clare writes in his rhyming calendar, "The wagons haste the corn to load, And hurry down the dusty road; The driving boy with eager eye Watches the church clock, passing by-- Whose gilt hands glitter in the sun-- To see how far the hours have run; Right happy in the breathless day, To see time wearing fast away."