and I ought not to trespass further on your hospitality, yet if I
might stay with you another day or so, I should be very grateful."

"My dear lad," cried the farmer, in whose estimation Kenelm had risen
prodigiously since the victory over Tom Bowles, "you are welcome to stay
as long as you like, and we shall be all sorry when you go. Indeed, at
all events, you must stay over Saturday, for you shall go with us to
the squire's harvest-supper. It will be a pretty sight, and my girls are
already counting on you for a dance."

"Saturday,--the day after to-morrow. You are very kind; but merrymakings
are not much in my way, and I think I shall be on my road before you set
off to the Squire's supper."

"Pooh! you shall stay; and, I say, young 'un, if you want more to do, I
have a job for you quite in your line."

"What is it?"

"Thrash my ploughman. He has been insolent this morning, and he is the
biggest fellow in the county, next to Tom Bowles."

Here the farmer laughed heartily, enjoying his own joke.

"Thank you for nothing," said Kenelm, rubbing his bruises. "A burnt
child dreads the fire."

The young man wandered alone into the fields. The day was becoming
overcast, and the clouds threatened rain. The air was exceedingly still;
the landscape, missing the sunshine, wore an aspect of gloomy solitude.
Kenelm came to the banks of the rivulet not far from the spot on which
the farmer had first found him. There he sat down, and leaned his cheek
on his hand, with eyes fixed on the still and darkened stream lapsing
mournfully away: sorrow entered into his heart and tinged its musings.

"Is it then true," said he, soliloquizing, "that I am born to pass
through life utterly alone; asking, indeed, for no sister-half of
myself, disbelieving its possibility, shrinking from the thought
of it,--half scorning, half pitying those who sigh for it?--thing
unattainable,--better sigh for the moon!

"Yet if other men sigh for it, why do I stand apart from them? If the
world be a stage, and all the men and women in it merely players, am I
to be the solitary spectator, with no part in the drama and no interest
in the vicissitudes of its plot? Many there are, no doubt, who covet as
little as I do the part of 'Lover,' 'with a woful ballad, made to his
mistress's eyebrow;' but then they covet some other part in the drama,
such as that of Soldier 'bearded as a pard,' or that of Justice 'in fair
round belly with fat capon lined.' But me