piece; the blue-and-white Dutch tiles, with queer squat figures
of Flemish citizens on foot and on horseback; the candles burning dimly
on the spindle-legged table--two poor pale flames reflected ghastly in
the dark polished panels of the wainscot; the big open Bible on an
adjacent table; the old silver tankard, and buckhorn-handled knives and
forks set out for supper; the solemn eight-day clock, ticking drearily
in the corner; and amid all that sombre old-fashioned comfort,
gray-haired Matthew sighing and lamenting for his vanished youth.

I have grown strangely romantic since I have fallen in love with
Charlotte Halliday. The time was when I should have felt nothing but a
flippant ignorant contempt for poor Haygarth's feeble sighings and
lamentings; but now I think of him with a sorrowful tenderness, and am
more interested in his poor commonplace life, that picture, and those
two locks of hair, than in the most powerful romance that ever emanated
from mortal genius. It has been truly said, that truth is stranger than
fiction: may it not as justly be said, that truth has a power to touch
the human heart which is lacking in the most sublime flights of a
Shakespeare, or the grandest imaginings of an Aeschylus? One is sorry
for the fate of Agamemnon; but one is infinitely more sorrowful for the
cruel death of that English Richard in the dungeon at Pomfret, who was
a very insignificant person as compared to the king of men and of ships.

CHAPTER III.

HUNTING THE JUDSONS.

_Oct. 10th_. Yesterday and the day before were blank days. On Saturday
I read Mrs. Rebecca's letters a second time after a late breakfast, and
spent a lazy morning in the endeavour to pick up any stray crumbs of
information which I might have overlooked the previous night. There was
nothing to be found, however; and, estimable as I have always
considered the founder of the Wesleyan fraternity, I felt just a little
weary of his virtues and his discourses, his journeyings from place to
place, his love-feasts and his prayer-meetings, before I had finished
with Mrs. Haygarth's correspondence. In the afternoon I strolled about
the town; made inquiries at several inns, with a view to discover
whether Captain Paget was peradventure an inmate thereof; looked in at
the railway-station, and watched the departure of a train; dawdled away
half an hour at the best tobacconist's shop in the town on the chance
of encountering my accomplished patron, who indu