railway time-table on my way home to-night, and have carefully studied
the bearings of the place amongst whose mouldy records I am to discover
the history of Christian Meynell's daughter and heiress.

I find that Huxter's Cross lies off the railroad, and is to be
approached by an obscure little station--as I divine from the
ignominious type in which its name appears--about sixty miles northward
of Hull. The station is called Hidling; and at Hidling there seems to
be a coach which plies between the station and Huxter's Cross.

Figure to yourself again, my dear, the heir-at-law to a hundred
thousand pounds vegetating in the unknown regions of Huxter's Cross cum
Hidling, unconscious of his heritage!

Shall I find him at the plough-tail, I wonder, this mute inglorious
heir-at-law? or shall I find an heiress with brawny arms meekly
churning butter? or shall I discover the last of the Meynells taking
his rest in some lonely churchyard, not to be awakened by earthly voice
proclaiming the tidings of earthly good fortune?

I am going to Yorkshire--that is enough for me. I languish for the
starting of the train which shall convey me thither. I begin to
understand the nostalgia of the mountain herdsman: I pine for that
northern air, those fresh pure breezes blowing over moor and
wold--though I am not quite clear, by the bye, as to the exact nature
of a wold. I pant, I yearn for Yorkshire. I, the cockney, the child of
Temple Bar, whose cradle-song was boomed by the bells of St. Dunstan's
and St. Clement's Danes.

Is not Yorkshire my Charlotte's birthplace? I want to see the land
whose daughters are so lovely.

CHAPTER III.

ARCADIA.

_November 1st_. This is Huxter's Cross, and I live here. I have lived
here a week. I should like to live here for ever. O, let me be rational
for a few hours, while I write the record of this last blissful week;
let me be reasonable, and business-like, and Sheldon-like for this one
wet afternoon, and then I may be happy and foolish again. Be still,
beating heart! as the heroines of Minerva-press romances were
accustomed to say to themselves on the smallest provocation. Be still,
foolish, fluttering, schoolboy heart, which has taken a new lease of
youth and folly from a fair landlord called Charlotte Halliday.

Drip, drip, drip, O rain! "The day is dark and cold and dreary, and the
vine still clings to the mouldering wall; and with every gust the dead
leaves fall:" but thy sweet sad