a kind-it's a pity he has sae willyard a powney." And she immediately turned her thoughts to the important journey which she had commenced, reflecting with pleasure, that, according to her habits of life and of undergoing fatigue, she was now amply or even superfluously provided with the means of encountering the expences of the road, up and down from London, and all other expences whatever.

CHAPTER 11.

What strange and wayward thoughts will slide

Into a lover's head:

"O mercy!" to myself I cried,

"If Lucy should be dead!"

WORDSWORTH.

IN pursuing her solitary journey, our heroine, soon after passing the house of Dumbiedikes, gained a little eminence, from which, on looking to the eastward down a prattling brook, whose meanders. were shaded with straggling willows and alder trees, she could see the cottages of Woodend and Beersheba, the haunts and habitation of her early life, and could distinguish the common on which she had so often herded sheep, and the recesses of the

rivulet where she had pulled rushes with

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Butler, to plait crowns and sceptres for her sister Effie, then a beautiful, but spoiled child, of about three years old. The recollections which the scene brought with them were so bitter, that, had she indulged them, she would have sate down and relieved her heart with tears.

"But I kenn'd," said Jeanie, "that greeting would do but little good, and that it was mair beseeming to thank the Lord, that had shewed me kindness and countenance by means

of a man, that mony ca'ed a Nabal and churl, but wha was free of his gudes to me as ever the fountain was free of the stream. And I minded the Scripture about the sin of Israel at Mirebah, when the people murmured, although Moses had brought water from the dry rock that the congregation might drink and live. Sae, I wad not trust mysell with another look at poor Woodend, for the very blue reek that came out of the lum-head pat me in mind of the change of market-days with us."

In this resigned and Christian temper she pursued her journey, until she was beyoud this place of melancholy recollections, and not distant from the village where Butler dwelt, which, with its old-fashioned church and steeple, rises among a tuft of trees, occupying the ridge of an eminence to the south of Edinburgh. At a quarter of a mile's distance is a clumsy square tower, the residence of the laird, who, in former times, with the habits of the predatory chivalry of Germany, is said frequently to have annoyed the city of Edinburgh, by intercepting the supplies and merchandize which came to the town from the southward.

This village, its tower, and its church, did not lie precisely in Jeanie's road towards England; but they were not much aside from it, and the village was the abode of Butler. She had resolved to see him in the beginning of her journey, because she conceived him the most pro per person to write to her father con

cerning her resolution and her hopes. There was probably another reason latent in her affectionate bosom. She wished once more to see the object of so early and so sincere an attachment, before commencing a pilgrimage, the perils of which she did not disguise from herself, although she did not allow them so to press upon her mind as to diminish the strength and energy of her resolution. A visit to a lover from a young person in a higher rank of life than Jeanie's, would have had something forward and improper in its character. But the simplicity of her rural habits was inconsistent with these punctilious ideas of decorum, and no notion, therefore, of impropriety crossed her imagination, as, setting out upon a long journey, she went to bid adieu to an early friend.

There was still another motive that pressed upon her mind with additional force as she approached the village. She had looked anxiously for Butler in the court-house, and had expected that certainly, in some