dinner--if he be not a philanthropist then, he never will be. Happening to glance my eye towards the other end of the table, I observed that I was the object of close and intense attention to one of the company--a stranger of prepossessing aspect, who was seated at some distance at the opposite side. He gazed at me with an earnestness almost amounting to rudeness; and whenever I glanced in that direction, I perceived that his eye was constantly riveted upon my countenance. At first, I was considerably annoyed by the persevering scrutiny of his gaze; but, after a time, I was conscious of a vague impression on my mind that I had seen his face before; but when or where, I in vain endeavoured to recall. I was in the unpleasant situation of one who hears a long-forgotten melody, which stirs up within his mind overpowering and indefinable emotions, though, at the moment, the associations connected with it are forgotten. A confused train of visions of the past, of pleasure and of pain, crowded through my brain, with a dreamy consciousness that the stranger was, in some way or another, connected with them. I could not, for the life of me, shake off the impression his features had made upon my mind; and I wandered up and down, through all the bustle of the fair, as abstracted as if I were in a desert--treading upon the toes of the present, and raking up the ashes of the past, to puzzle out some connection between them and the stranger; but in vain. The indignant looks and half-suppressed curses of those I jostled or trod upon alike failed in rousing me from my reverie, till a violent push from the elbow of one of my victims sent me staggering against a gentleman who was standing close to one of the booths. It was the stranger. How wonderful and unaccountable are the workings of the human mind, and what trifling incidents may present us with a clue to the labyrinth of thought we have been in vain endeavouring to unravel! In making my apologies to the stranger, my eye chanced to glance upwards to the _sign_ above the entrance to the booth; it was "The Old Ship." A flash of sudden recollection lighted up the dark places of my memory--the friend of my early days stood before me. "Sandford!--in the name of all that's strange, is that you?" "My name is Sandford Grant," said he, "and I know and feel that you are an old friend. I have been thinking of nothing else since I saw you in the barn; but my memory plays me false--I cannot recollect when or where we have met before." "Look up at that board--perhaps it will assist your recollection, as it did mine." "The Old Ship!" exclaimed he, with a look of wonder and inquiry. "The Old Ship!" he repeated, slowly and distinctly, and then he gazed long and earnestly in my face, till at length the look of indecision and doubt gave place to a sudden glow of delighted recognition. "Douglas!" exclaimed he, with a long and cordial shake of the hand.