gravity and dignity I ever encountered; short,
and square, and upright, and slow, with a fine bronzed flat
visage, resembling those convertible signs the Broad-Face and the
Saracen's-Head, which, happening to be next-door neighbours in the
town of B., I never knew apart, resembling, indeed, any face that is
open-eyed and immovable, the very sign of a boy! He stalks about with
his hands in his breeches pockets, like a piece of machinery; sits
leisurely down when he ought to field, and never gets farther in batting
than to stop the ball. His is the only voice never heard in the melee:
I doubt, indeed, if he have one, which may be partly the reason of a
circumstance that I record to his honour, his fidelity to Jem Eusden,
to whom he has adhered through every change of fortune, with a tenacity
proceeding perhaps from an instinctive consciousness that the loquacious
leader talks enough for two. He is the only thing resembling a follower
that our demagogue possesses, and is cherished by him accordingly.
Jem quarrels for him, scolds for him, pushes for him; and but for
Joe Kirby's invincible good-humour, and a just discrimination of the
innocent from the guilty, the activity of Jem's friendship would get the
poor hussar ten drubbings a day.

But it is growing late. The sun has set a long time. Only see what a
gorgeous colouring has spread itself over those parting masses of clouds
in the west,--what a train of rosy light! We shall have a fine sunshiny
day to-morrow,--a blessing not to be undervalued, in spite of my late
vituperation of heat. Shall we go home now? And shall we take the
longest but prettiest road, that by the green lanes? This way, to the
left, round the corner of the common, past Mr. Welles's cottage, and
our path lies straight before us. How snug and comfortable that cottage
looks! Its little yard all alive with the cow, and the mare, and the
colt almost as large as the mare, and the young foal, and the great
yard-dog, all so fat! Fenced in with hay-rick, and wheat-rick, and
bean-stack, and backed by the long garden, the spacious drying-ground,
the fine orchard, and that large field quartered into four different
crops. How comfortable this cottage looks, and how well the owners earn
their comforts! They are the most prosperous pair in the parish--she
a laundress with twenty times more work than she can do, unrivalled in
flounces and shirt-frills, and such delicacies of the craft; he, partly
a farmer, partly a