ch, one of the young Aids of our General. He was a
personable Youth, and the Arrangement of the many Fripperies of the
Costume of a young Gallant did naught to take away from the Face and
Figure which Providence had accorded him. It were better had he or Mary
Twining chosen another Time for the Journey."

Neither, probably, did a natural timidity of disposition do aught to
lessen the impression which a personable young man has it in his power
in any century to make upon a fair and observing girl. Mary herself
says:--

"There rode down with us a young gallant of most holiday Appearance, but
not ignorant withal of the working days of a Soldier. It was not long
before he had entered into Conversation with Mr. Edwards, who had
knowledge of the young Man's Parents, from which Conversation I learned
something of himself, though most modestly told. He would fain have
opened the Way for me to join in my Guardian's Questioning, but I bore
in Mind the Unseemliness of an unwarranted Acquaintanceship, and sought
rather to avoid than to court the Glances which he was not over cautious
in sending in my Direction."

"A Maid's avoidance," observes the biographer, "of a Youth's Glances, is
not of that Nature that is the Cutting off of all Hope."

And Fortune, too, was not of so perverse a disposition in this June
weather as she is sometimes. For, on the second day, when probably
glances, so conscientiously evaded, had become but the accompaniment of
spoken words, there was an accident. The coach, as coaches are apt to
do, was upset, and its occupants "made haste rather as they could than
as they would," to leave it. In the confusion and tumbling about of
heavy boxes Mary might have been badly hurt, had not the young gallant,
quickly springing to his feet, caught her as she was thrown forward by a
second lurch of the unwieldy thing, and, lifting her up, carried her out
of the way of falling luggage and struggling horses to a place of
safety.

"He lifted me as though I had been but a Feather's weight, showing a
Strength which is indeed Goodly in the Sons of Men," says Mary demurely,
"and which was most grateful in the Stress and Confusion, and in its
display most Timely, though perhaps," she adds, with delicious
frankness, "he was not over ready to put me down that he might hasten
back to be of further help."

"My Bonnet was awry," she continues, "my Hair in sad confusion, and my
Face a Milkmaid Red, so that I said with but little