, as they sometimes did, and often wondered where the opening went to, and that I had come rolling down upon them, they would have been frightened out of their senses; for they must have thought it a very strange appearance: without hearing the history of it, they must think it a prodigious occurrence, or exception from the constant affairs of nature.
This might be, ladies, (I answered,) but from seeing me before your eyes you must own, that many things may be fact, which at first may seem to exceed the common limits

of truth. Impossible or supernatural some people conclude many cases to be that have not the least difficulty in them, but happen to be made of occurrences and places they have not seen, nor heard the like of before. Things thought prodigious or incredible by ignorance and weakness, will appear to right knowledge and a due judgment very natural and accountable to the thoughts.
Here a footman came up to us, to let his mistress know that dinner was on the table, and we immediately went in to an excellent one. The ladies were very civil to me, and exerted a good humour to shew me, I suppose, that my arrival was not disagreeable to them, tho' I tumbled upon their habitation, like the genie of the caverns, from the hollows of the mountains. They talked in an easy, rational manner, and asked me many questions that shewed they were no strangers to books and men and things: but at last it came to pass, that the eldest of those ladies, who acted as mistress of the house, and seemed to be about one or two and twenty, desired to know the name of the gentleman I was looking for among these hills, and called my friend. My reason, Sir, for asking is, that you answer so exactly in face and person to a description of a gentleman I heard not very

long ago, that I imagine it may be in my power to direct you right.
Madam, (I replied), the gentleman I am in search of is Charles Turner, who was my schoolfellow, and my senior by a year in the university, which he left two years before I did, and went from Dublin to the north of England, to inherit a paternal estate on the decease of his father. There was an uncommon friendship between this excellent young man and me, and he made me promise him, in a solemn manner, to call upon him as soon as it was in my power; assuring me at the same time, that if by any