ing up boxes, packages. He is glad to be employed, anything to divert the irritable gnawing sense of impatience. At last it is done. "Yes; yes, Sir." "Will you mount?" says the guard; and Langford is in his place. The guard scrambles up by his side; he puts his horn to his mouth, and the merry cheering blast startles the dull echoes of the night. Lash goes the whip; forward spring the gay prancing horses; they rattle down Trumpington-street, the guard blowing a merry reveillée as the coach careers along. They have crossed the bridge, they are out of the town. The detested University, with its green-arched arbouring walks, its lofty trees, its hoary towers, its venerable time-hallowed colleges, dies away into the mist and he is in the freedom of the fields once more. He breathes again. He begins to draw long, heavy relieving breaths. The fresh air of the morning expands his chest; the free air of nature blows upon his temples. The pressure, the iron band, and the hideous nightmare of the last twelve hours where are they gone? They have vanished with the hoar towers of the University-sunk, dissolved, as it were, in the wreath of the mist, which, as the coach thus gallops forward with the speed of the light from the banks of the reedy and sluggish Cam, disappears among the open unenclosed hills towards Newmarket. The sky clears overhead; the day dawns in the east, and the golden beam first faintly streaking the rising morning, slowly expands, and the birds begin to whistle over the treeless fields as the sun comes on comes on And then there is a pause till up he bursts in all his glory. The coach gallops on gallops on over hill, over dale, across open plain, and between rising banks; and every mile it proceeds, and every half-hour that elapses, fresh freedom and energy seem to visit the bosom of the anguished man. That weight, that oppressive, insupportable weight, which society had laid upon him seems removed. Society and he were not made for each other. He was formed to live alone with nature, like some lordly, sullen, lion that one has heard of litary lonely grandeur in the desert. Randal Langford's element. -- found, in his so Such a desert is His horseman's cloak wrapt round him, for the air of these hills is chilly, his arms crossed over his breast now he looks down, indulging the delicious feeling of the renewal of life which springs within him, then lifts up his head and cheerfully regards the flying landscape. Sometimes he, though not given to casual conversation, addresses the guard, and puts questions about the various seats of the different country gentry as they pass. And with a sullen, indistinct sense of satisfaction hears, alas! the usual record of this man's extravagance, and that man's unhappiness, of the vices of such an one, and the misfortune of another, and why that house is shut up, and this to be sold, · and that is let, and to whom, — that is uninhabited, and why. A tale, like most tales of humanity, sad and disheartening, because the human story is too often sad and disheartening; its happier and better side being seldom the upper side of the medal. Misfortunes and crimes stimulate the vulgar curiosity, the vulgar appetite for excitement; the virtues and their peaceful enjoyments afford little subject for discourse, and little scope for description. So the traveller goes on. He travels night and day without stopping. And it will take him another night and two days before he reaches the place of his destination. This is Ravenscliffe situated in a most secluded part of that part of the country, which lies upon the borders of Northumberland and Durham. "Good morning! Horribly cold. This is the most detestable weather." "Say, detestable place in the world. I verily believe we have more fog at Cambridge than at any place in the United Kingdom." "Any news? How go the bets?" "Has anybody seen Fitzroy this morning? He thinks no more of 'going out,' as he calls it, than of playing a game at chuck-farthing - but there is something in the thought of a friend being about to be engaged in a duel, that makes one quiver in spite of one's self." "Well; but does any one know anything about it? Who said he was gone out? I don't believe a word of it. I passed his door two minutes ago, and he still sported his oak. I don't believe he is up. See, his blinds are down; and the first thing he does in the morning is, to draw them up." "Well, get along, or we shall be too late for chapel." "By Jove! I wonder how Langford will look." "You need not trouble yourself with wondering how he will look," said another under-graduate, joining the party "for Langford's gone." "Gone!" "Yes; my Gyp has just told me that his Gyp told him Langford left his rooms at four o'clock this morning, and was off by the Northern Highflyer." "Fairly turned tail." At which they all laughed, and hurried in to chapel. CHAPTER II. "T is the place; and round the gables, as of old, the curlews call, Dreary gleams about the moorland, flying over Locksley Hall Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the dreary tracks... TENNYSON. RAVENSCLIFFE is situated in what was then a most deeply secluded part of England I say was, for I understand one of the northern railroads has now penetrated through that portion of the country, disclosing to the eye its long-hidden and unimaginable beauties but at the time of which I am writing, it might be called a district almost quite unknown. No great roads traversed it no traffic animated it the secluded vales and deans never echoed to the rousing horn of the mail-coach, nor were enlivened by the gay public equipage glancing along its deserted roads. - A wide desert of brown hills and rocky mountains, a desolate country of mines and miners, extending over wide tracts, separated from the ordinary world some of the most lovely scenery of our beautiful island. A few ancient mansions, surrounded by their secular woods of oak, and birch, and mountain ash; with wild half-redeemed parks, studded by enormous trees, that might have seen the Conquest, were scantily scattered over this district, most of them, even at that time of day, being abandoned by their proprietors. A few there were, however, where the owners still lived |