Saunders the carrier is drawn up in front of the Royal Oak, collecting his packages and passengers for a start. Two or three tax-carts have passed already, and old Payden was away an hour ago with his donkey and cart laden with geese and poultry. kind of reflected dignity to be the father of a landed proprietor in embryo. "Ah!" said the policeman, to whom the arrangements of Aunt Betsy's will were known in the indefinite exaggerated form they had assumed in the talk of the country-side, "you'll have the old place opened up then, and gay doings, I ex Tom is come to brushing his hair by this time, with his back to the pathway,pect." and he starts on hearing a voice exclaim: "Buy a nice 'air-brush this morning, sir?" "Hollo!" said Tom, turning round, and seeing a pedler standing on the footpath, with a basket slung round his shoulders by a broad leathern strap. "What, pedler! you think I want a new one, eh! Oh, this old thing will serve my turn for a while; it don't fetch the hairs out, as a new one might, and I'm getting so as I can't spare any." "Buy a nice pair of vauses, then, for the good lady?" "Hollo!" cried Tom again; "don't I remember you. Didn't I buy a comb of you this very Christmas five years or six, is it?" 66 P'raps you did; I can't remember all my customers. Well, will you give me a turn, master?" "Not this morning, I think," replied Tom; whereupon the man moved rapidly off without further soliciting custom. He had left only a few minutes, when the helmet of a rural policeman appeared over the garden hedge. "Hollo, Bridger!" said Tom, "is that you? It's a fine morning, this." "So it is, Mr. Rapley. I thought I'd just look in to tell you that there was a man sleeping in your old barn last night." Well, I'm glad the old place has been some use to a fellow-creature." 66 "That we shall, you may depend; but then we may none of us be alive to see it." "Do you think she's there?" said the policeman, pointing mysteriously with his thumb over his shoulder to the empty house. "Do you think she'll be found there when it's opened - the old woman, I mean?" "What! my Aunt Betsy? makes you think that?" What "That's what all the people say, sir, as she is laid out on the best bed, with the string of the 'larum-bell round her hand, so as if she came to life again she could make herself heard. I often thinks, when I comes this way at night: Suppose the old gal should wake up and ring the bell, what'd I do?" "La!" said Tom, "is that what the people say! Why, nobody ever said so to me.' "Taint likely they'd talk to you about it; but that's what's the story about here, sir, with the country-folk; and they say, too, that Lawyer Frewen has a hundred a year through the old lady's will as long as she's above ground.” 66 Upon my word, Bridger,” said Rapley, "I'm sorry you've told me. I shan't sleep so well at nights now, and shall always be listening for that 'larum-bell.” "Well, Mr. Rapley," said the policeman with an appreciative chuckle, “I'd "But he don't bear the best of char-rather you had the job of taking care of acters -a pedler sort of chap he be. He ain't been out of jail long for passing bad money." "He must sleep somewhere, for all that," said Tom. If he don't do any thing worse than sleep, he won't harm." "I've done my duty by telling you, Mr. Rapley; and I wonder you don't pull the old place down. It's a regular harbour for tramps when they come this way." "You must speak to Lawyer Frewen about that," said Tom: "it's all in his hands now. It'll all come to my son one of these days, and then we shall see the difference." Tom was fond of imparting this information about his son. It gave him a this old place than me. Morning, sir." Tom went into the house, where his wife was busy cleaning up, the young heir clinging to his mother's apron, whilst baby was amusing herself with a saucepan lid on the dresser. "I'll not tell her anything about what they say, or she'll never let me go out of an evening. It's about time I went to get the money." "Tom," said his wife, suspending her cleaning operations for a moment"Tom, do you know that it's Christmas next week; and, Tom, don't you draw your salary to-day?" "Why, of course I do," said Tom. "You don't suppose I should forget that remarkable fact, do you! I say, old girl, what are we going to have for dinner on Christmas day?" "I'll speak to butcher about it to-day: a bit of the loin of beef, about three pounds and a half; and a batter-pudding with currants in it." "What would you say to a goose, Lizzie, eh?" said Tom, rubbing his hands, "nicely stuffed with plenty of sage and onions, and apple-sauce, sweetly browned with some rich gravy, eh; and the pudding baked underneath it?” Tom nudged his partner rapturously, who contemplated the picture thus called up before her mind's eye with a preoccupied doubtful gaze. "Where's the money to come from, Tom?" she said at last. "Oh, you leave that to me," said Tom. "Don't I draw my salary to-day?” "Just think, Tom, how long that money has to last!" cried Mrs. Rapley. "We ought to have learned a lesson of selfdenial by this time." Tom's countenance fell. But, then, roast goose was so nice; and it's a poor heart that never rejoices. Tom snatched up his spade, and hurried off. Mrs. Rapley went to the gate, with the baby in her arms, to watch for Farmer Brown, and presently descried him coming down the lane in his dog-cart, a young horse in the shafts, who was shewing a good deal of action, and was already in a lather with heat and impatience. "Tom will be here in a minute," she called to the farmer, as he drew up at the gate. "Hurry him on, Mrs. Rapley," cried Brown, a fresh-colored, hearty-looking farmer; "my mare's young, and full of fidgets." Tom!" she cried, running up the garden-walk towards the house, "Look alive - Mr. Brown's waiting." Tom was kneeling in the doorway, holding on to the door-posts, looking as white as a sheet, and trembling all over. "Gone!" he gasped. "It's gone!" "What's gone? O Tom, is it Bertie?" No; Bertie was all right; he clinging to his father's legs, trying to mount on his back; he thought this was some little pantomime gone through for his special amusement. was "The money! the money! it's gone! O Lizzie, we're ruined!" "O Tom!" cried Lizzie. you not to hide it away." 66 "And I told Tom gasped as if choking with horror and despair. "Tom!" cried Lizzie, "get up and Have you really meet it like a man. been robbed? Send after the thief; rouse the country; fetch the police!" "Now then, Master Rapley," cried Brown's voice from his dog-cart; "look alive there, can't you?" "O daddy!" cried the boy, "give Bertie a ride in Missa Brown's cart." Tom threw the boy off roughly. "Get away, you brat! You've robbed your father of his birthright; and now he's ruined. Oh, let me die! Lizzie, let me die!" "Mr. Brown!" cried Lizzie, running to the gate; "Tom's been robbed. Drive off to the police-office; please do; and tell them to stop the thief, wherever he may be." "Robbed!" cried Brown "robbed! What's he been robbed of?" "All the rate-money! Five hundred pounds and more!" I Brown whistled in dismay. What a fool the man was to have all that money in his house! Brown was a friend, but he was also a ratepayer; and one of his first thoughts was, shall I have to pay over again? "Let me see," he said; met Bridger coming over Gomersham Bridge; I wonder which way he went? I could overtake him, and bring him back, if I knew. Or, shall I drive in to Biscopham, and tell the superintendent there?" "Better go to Biscopham. Oh, do make haste, Mr. Brown, please!" cried Lizzie, clasping her hands. "But I must have some particulars," said Brown; "it's no use going with half a tale. Tom must give me a list of the notes and the cheques, so that we may stop 'em at the bank." "The money was all in gold." "Whew!" whistled Brown, looking glummer than ever. "All in gold! What a fool! And where did he put it?" "Tom, where did you put the money?" screamed his wife. He hadn't even told her where he had hidden it. “I buried it under the bricks,” cried Tom. "What folly!” cried the farmer. "But look here, Rapley; you jump in, and come with me to Biscopham. I'd rather you told the story than me." Brown had a lurking feeling that it might be better for the interests of the parish that Mr. Rapley should himself be under the supervision of the police. Tom certainly looked as if he might have been guilty of any crime he was so haggard and downcast. All his strength and spirit had deserted him. It was a wild, improbable tale he had to tell, and the house, and the door bolted and locked, he felt that he wouldn't have believed whilst Mrs. Rapley abandoned herself to it himself of any other man. bitter, unavailing grief. He drove away in Brown's dog-cart, his shoulders rounded, and his chin resting on his chest. Ill news flies apace, and in some manner-it would be difficult to say howthe whole village simultaneously came to know that Tom Rapley had lost his ratemoney. The rumour overtook Bridger the policeman in his rounds, and he forthwith returned in haste to Milford's. He questioned Mrs. Rapley narrowly about the matter; but her knowledge of the circumstances were vague and confused. Tom had been robbed, but she couldn't say how, and the money was all in gold. "Did you see the pedler that he was talking to this morning, ma'am, that slept in the old barn last night? He was no very good character either." Lizzie hadn't seen him. There was a gleam of hope here. It was possible this man was the robber, and might be traced and stopped before he could get rid of the money. "I'll be after him, ma'am !" cried the policeman" depend upon it, he's the thief, ma'am; unless," he added in a low voice, "it happens to be Tom Rapley himself." Hardly had Bridger gone, when Aunt Booth came down, a shawl hastily thrown over her head. "Is it true?" she cried -"is it true what I hear? Oh, he's ruined us all!" "What do you mean, aunt? What harm has he done to you?" "Why! ain't I security for him Mr. Frewen and I-for five hundred pounds; the silly, unlucky fool! O Liz, why did you or I ever set eyes on his monkey face! If he isn't a rogue too "Get out of my house!" cried Lizzie, all ablaze with anger; and then there was a quarrel between the two women, by way of mending matters. No one can say what would have been the issue of it, if Sailor hadn't come up just then, and separated the aunt and niece. He carried off Mrs. Booth to her own home, and then came back to comfort Mrs. Rapley. 66 Why, look here, ma'am," he said; "it stands to reason as there can't be any occasion to take on. Either your master's a honest man and if he be, none of them can't touch him or else he's collared the money, and there'll be the five hundred pounds to fall back upon!" At this Sailor himself was driven from From The Spectator. SCOTCH DOROTHY WORDSWORTH'S EVERYTHING fresh we learn of Wordsworth deepens the impression of that hardy imaginative simplicity which is the chief characteristic of his genius. This is one great charm of his sister's diary of the Highland Tour of 1803. Miss Wordsworth, who cherished every incident connected with the origin of one of his poems, puts down in this journal, not for public perusal, but for the wife who stays behind with her child, the modest story of their adventures, and yet not a word in it from beginning to end betrays the conscious seeker after æsthetic feelings, or suggests the attendant nymph sharing something of the glow of a poet's inspiration. There is a remarkable selfrestraint, not to say fortitude, in the manner in which the constantly recurring bad weather, and not unfrequently severe discomforts of the journey are described, as though nothing better were to be expected. There is not a trace of the feeling that there was any sort of merit in the ideal objects of the travellers' search, or any prerogative belonging to a poet which is injuriously treated by the buffets to which ordinary men are liable. The journal is as simple and natural as if there were no poetic reputation either to gain or to keep up. When any touch of poetry marks the journal, it is as plain that it comes there through the natural ardour of the writer's own - - not even her brother's-feelings, as it is that when you might conventionally have expected it, it is often not to be found. Miss Wordsworth writes generally with extreme literalness of the incidents of travel, though, of course, as one whose expectations are on the stretch for the beauties of which she has heard so much. Her brother and Coleridge figure not in the least as poets, but simply as fellowtravellers who share her fatigues and enjoyments, and who frequently help her to discern what is most memorable. Any Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland in 1803 by, Dorothy Wordsworth. Edited by J. C. Shairp, LL.D., Principal of the United College of St. Salvator and St. Leonard, St. Andrews. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas. oftener thing less like the style of a "sentimen- her imagination, and it was simple than grand,—and a certain ardent does he go? He rides over the water, and over the snow, Through wood and through vale, and o'er rocky height, Which the goat cannot scale, takes his sounding flight. The full brightness of that gay and breezy little poem is to be found less frequently than we could wish in the diary of this rather gloomy-weathered tour; but one is very often struck with the pleasure which Miss Wordsworth feels in tracing, just as in that poem, the effect of an influence of which she cannot tell the whence or the whither, and the extreme enjoyment with which she takes note of anything like a god-send. Take this, for instance: The woman of the house was very kind: whenever we asked her for anything it seemed she always answered with a sort of softening, a fresh pleasure to her that she had it for us; "Her face was of Egyptian brown;" rarely, in a woman of English birth, had I seen a more determinate gipsy tan. Her eyes were not soft as Mrs. Wordsworth's, nor were they fierce or bold; but they were wild, and startling, and hurried in their motion. Her manner was warm, and even ardent; her sensibility seemed constitutionally deep; and some subtle fire of impassioned intellect apparently burned within her, which-being alternately pushed forward into a conspicuous expression by the irresistible instincts of her temperament, and then immediately checked in obedience to the decorum of her sex and age and her maidenly condition- gave to her whole demeanour, and to her conversation, an air of embarrass-down of the Scotch exclamation, "Hoot!" ment, and even of self-conflict, that was almost distressing to witness. Even her very utterance and enunciation often suffered in point of clearness and steadiness, from the agitation of her excessive organic sensibility. At times the self-counteraction and self-baffling of her feelings caused her even to stammer. But the greatest deductions from Miss Wordsworth's attractions, and from the exceeding interest which surrounded her, in right of her character, of her history, and of the relation which she fulfilled towards her brother, were the glancing quickness of her motions, and other circumstances in her deportment (such as her stooping attitude when walking), which gave an ungraceful character to her appearance when out of doors. "Ho! yes, ye'll get that," and hied to her cupboard in the spence. We were amused with the phrase "Ye'll get that" in the Highlands, which appeared to us as if it came from a perpetual feeling of the difficulty with which most things are procured. . . . We asked for sugar, butter, barley-bread, and milk, and with a smile and a stare more of kindness than wonder, she replied, "Ye'll get that," bringing We caroused our cach article separately. cups of coffee, laughing like children at the strange atmosphere in which we were: the smoke came in gusts, and spread along the walls and above our heads in the chimney, where the hens were roosting like light clouds in the sky. We laughed and laughed again, in spite of the smarting of our eyes, yet had a quieter pleasure in observing the beauty of But though this bright, eager manner the beams and rafters gleaming between the penetrates many portions of her diary, clouds of smoke. They had been crusted there is no trace in it of the embarrass-over and varnished by many winters, till, ment or conflict of feeling of which De where the firelight fell upon them, they were Quincey speaks, and which may very as glossy as black rocks, on a sunny day cased possibly have been more or less provoked about half an hour, and I think I had never in ice. When we had eaten our supper we sat by his own critical glances. What one felt so deeply the blessing of a hospitable notes in it is the delicacy of her apprecia-welcome and a warm fire. . . . The walls of tion of all the human interests of the the whole house were of stone unplastered. scenes visited, a considerable power of art- It consisted of three apartments, less intensity in describing any scene, house at one end, the kitchen or house in the whether grand or simple, which struck middle, and the spence at the other end. The - the cow island as an object of special interest, for some time under the shelter of it. What a tone of sympathetic dreariness rooms were divided, not up to the rigging, but only to the beginning of the roof, so that there was a free passage for light and smoke from one end of the house to the other. I went to bed some time before the family. The door was shut between us, and they had a bright fire, which I could not see; but the light it sent up among the varnished rafters and beams, which crossed each other in almost as intricate and fantastic a manner as I have seen the under-boughs of a large beech-tree withered by the depth of the shade above, produced the most beautiful effect that can be conceived. It was like what I should suppose an underground cave or temple to be, with a dripping or moist roof, and the moonlight entering in upon it by some means or other, and yet the colours were more like melted gems. I lay looking up till the light of the fire faded away, and the man and his wife and child had crept into their bed at the other end of the room. I did not sleep much, but passed a comfortable night, for my bed, though hard, was warm and clean: the unusualness of my situation prevented me from sleeping. I could hear the waves beat against the shore of the lake; a little "syke" close to the door made a much louder noise; and when I sate up in my bed I could see the lake through an open window-place at the bed's head. Add to this, it rained all night. I was less occupied by remembrance of the Trossachs, beautiful as they were, than the vision of the Highland hut, which I could not get out of my head. I thought of the Fairyland of Spenser, and what I had read in romance at other times, and then, what a feast would it be for a London pantomime-maker, could he but transplant it to Drury Lane, with all its beautiful colours! Evidently the indications of poverty of resource in the Highland woman's larder, the triumph with which she identified anything asked for, as amongst the very small category of things obtainable in her house, made the little meal all the more delightful to Miss Wordsworth, who felt a poetry in the surprises of nature and life, which she could not so much feel in the habitual order thereof. This seems to have been the secret also of her delight in the flying shadows crossing the rafters as she lay in bed in the watched sailing out of a harbour of the sea. Highland hut, listening to the plash of the waves of Loch Katrine, and yet think- Of course, the chief interest of this jouring more of the novelty and picturesque-nal will be usually regarded as its acness of her own position, in one com- count of the few incidents which were partment of a hut shared with her by a the germs of some of Wordsworth's most cow and the Highland ferryman and his striking poems, that, for instance, family. Indeed, as every one has noticed which suggested the lines to a Highland who has hitherto criticised this diary, girl at Inversneyde, upon Loch Lomond, Miss Wordsworth is always more alive to and that which gave rise to the lines, the human touches in the midst of nat-“What, you are stepping Westward ?” ural beauty, than even to the natural In both instances we see something beauty itself. On Loch Lomond she more than the mere occasion, indeed, the singles out a little bark-hut in a lonely true germ of the poetic conception which where we were. After we had wound for some time through the valley, having met neither foot-traveller, horse, nor cart, we started at the sight of a single vessel, just as it turned round the point of a hill, coming into the reach of the valley the middle of the water, with one large sail She floated steadily through spread out full swollen by the breeze, that blew her right towards us. I cannot express what romantic images this vessel brought along with her how much more beautiful the mountains appeared, the lake how much more graceful. There was one man on board, who sate at the helm, and he, having no companion, made the boat look more silent than if we could not have seen him. I had almost said the ship, for on that narrow water it ap Peared as large as the ships which I have |