wild apple trees, slept many a Yorkist and Lancastrian. Sometimes an unusually deep furrow turned out a white bone—but more often the relics were undisturbed, and the meadows used as pastures or hay-fields.

John and I lay down on some wind-rows, and sunned ourselves in the warm and delicious air. How beautiful everything was! so very still! with the Abbey-tower—always the most picturesque point in our Norton Bury views—showing so near, that it almost seemed to rise up out of the fields and hedge-rows.

"Well, David," and I turned to the long, lazy figure beside me, which had considerably flattened the hay, "are you satisfied?"

"Ay."

Thus we lounged out all the summer morning, recurring to a few of the infinitude of subjects we used to compare notes upon; though we were neither of us given to wordiness, and never talked but when we had something to say. Often—as on this day—we sat for hours in a pleasant dreaminess, scarcely exchanging a word; nevertheless, I could generally track John's thoughts, as they went wandering on, ay, as clearly as one might track a stream through a wood; sometimes—like to-day—I failed.

In the afternoon, when we had finished our bread and cheese—eaten slowly and with graceful dignity, in order to make dinner a more important and lengthy affair—he said abruptly—

"Phineas, don't you think this field is rather dull? Shall we go somewhere else? not if it tires you, though."

I protested the contrary, my health being much above the average this summer. But just as we were quitting the field we met two rather odd-looking persons entering it, young-old persons they seemed, who might own to any age or any occupation. Their dress, especially that of the younger, amused us by its queer mixture of fashionableness and homeliness, such as grey ribbed stockings and shining paste shoe-buckles, rusty velvet small-clothes and a coatee of blue cloth. But the wearer carried off this anomalous costume with an easy, condescending air, full of pleasantness, humour, and grace.

"Sir," said he, approaching John Halifax with a bow that I feel sure the "first gentleman of his day," as loyal folk then entitled the Prince Regent, could not have surpassed—"Sir, will you favour me by informing us how far it is to Coltham?"

"Ten miles, and the stage will pass here in three hours."

"Thank you; at present I have little to do with