Chance for a singeing; but then it's the best

XXI.

We can do; and, indeed, it's the only way left

to us.

The flame's but a thin one, just bushes and such,

The trees have not caught yet. Now, shut your eyes, Benjie.

One breath, men, and then
through! Well, the touch

XXII.

spur it

Wasn't pleasant; it's singed all our beards and eyelashes;

But, we are through!

Now spur

What, another?

Spur for your lives, men!-That last was a close one; and

Benjie is gasping; my eyes see a blur

XXIII.

Of yellow and red-it's the smoke that is blinding them !—

Say, can you breathe, boys?-Ha, there's the lake!

The fire is between us; but, never mind, ride for it

Ride for it-ride for it! Oh, for the sake

XXIV.

Of our wives who are pious, our mothers who pray for us,

Maybe the saints will decide to fall to

gin at the very beginning, and to take a preliminary taste of Mr. and Miss Bodley's company before I should be called on to face the rest of the guests: one, however, was before me. I found him sitting with Mr. Bodley, who introduced him as Mr. Giles Umbelow.

"Mr. Umbelow," said Mr. Bodley, "is not quite so near a connection as yourself, Mr. Penhallow. He belongs to the Simon Bodley stock. Simon was the member of the family who brought some apparent confusion into the genealogy-no offense to you, Mr. Umbelow; you have yourself smiled at Simon Bodley's curious family relations."

"Yes," said Mr. Umbelow, who spoke somewhat cautiously and with a blank look, as if he had once, under great provocation, smiled, "Simon Bodley seems to have done all he could to confuse the succession. It was, however, an only daughter that married George Umbelow, my great-grandfather."

"Just so," said Mr. Bodley. "The line is perfect on which you descend.-But you see, Mr. Penhallow, what you may yourself have noticed in the tables which I showed you last night, that Simon Bodley, who was the youngest of twelve sons, was himself married three times. The first time he mar ried the Widow Mendip, who had three daughters by two previous husbands-I will not now give their names-and by the Widow Mendip he had two sons. The five children,

three families, you observe, all lived with their parent, and Simon was equally attached to them all, I judge, for on his wife's death they continued to live with him, and did after his second marriage with the Widow Garden, who had three sons, and brought him two more; but the Widow Garden's three sons were of two families, and so that made, let me see, ten children, six families. The Widow Garden died of course Mrs. Bodley at the time of her death. She was an estimable lady. I have her epitaph in my collection, and Simon, who was still young, married a third time, the Widow Lankester being his choice. She added four children, the fruit of a previous marriage, and by her he had a daughter and a son. The son died in infancy, and the daughter married George Umbelow. Now, that made-three and two are five, and three are eight, and two are ten, and four are fourteen, and two are sixteen, children; and two and two are four, and one is five, and three are eight-eight families. A curious gathering, was it not? And, what complicated matters somewhat, Henry Garden married Phoebe Mendip, and Robert Garden married Hetty Lankester."

"I should think they might have concocted a companion to the old riddle

'Brothers and sisters have I none,

Yet this man's father is my father's son," "

said I.

"Never heard that riddle," said Mr. Umbelow. "Please repeat it, sir."

I did so, and, after repeating it to himself, he became so absorbed in the solution that I turned to Mr. Bodley and said:

"Pray tell me, sir, whom I may expect to see here to-day, for you remember I did not get my invitation in the same way as others, and so have not seen those who are to come."

"I was governed by various considerations in my selection," said he. "I formed no special test other than real relationship. I don't know, but I am a little afraid that I made a mistake regarding one of my invitations. However, I think, with Mr. Tyrel's exception, we are all of the family. There is a fellow countryman of yours, Mr. Increase Byles, and his wife. They came together yesterday, and he seemed more desirous of talking over a project of his with me than of the matter in hand. He is a descendant pretty direct from Governor Bodley; the Byleses and the Penhallows are equally removed from the governor, and the families diverge in the next generation. So you are not very nearly related to him. His wife seems rather despondent, and it was chiefly on her account that I invited them. I think their loss of the estate touched her more than it did him. Then there is Mr. Henry Pecker, lately from Madras, where he has been for a number of years past making collections in natural history. He shows the effects of the climate, although I do not think his appearance is wholly owing to the heat. I should think he might have suffered from stooping too much to pick up shells and the like. But he is a pleasing man, and is in some trouble about his collection. He never had put in very strong claims to the estate, but his mother's name having been Bodley he applied, and I

found him descended from the excellent Sir Thomas Bodley, whose name is honored in the annals of our family. Mr. Pecker consents to come, and seems quite—indeed to be quite-without a home in England. Another of our guests is one whom I have before occasionally met, Miss Persis Northumberland, who has been more urgent in asserting her claim to the estate than some others. I did not like to ruin her hopes entirely, Mr. Penhallow, and I have been as gentle as would consist with firmness. I regret that she is not yet wholly convinced, but she does not object to sitting at a family dinner."

"It will at any rate be pleasant to your daughter," said I, "to have Miss Northumberland's company."

"Yes, Miss Northumberland is a lady who has well preserved the grace of old English manners. I am sorry that she should be so positive respecting the weight of her claims. Perhaps, though, it is well that she should not be too roughly shaken in her confidence. There is another gentleman whom you may perhaps regard as a fellow-countryman, M. Felix Bodelet, of San Antonio de Bexar, Texas. The gentleman belongs to our family, though his name has undergone a transformation. It seems that his mother was French, but his father a Bodley; and, the latter dying, Madame Bodley was in the habit of writing her name more in accordance with her national orthography. M. Bodelet, as he wishes to be called, noticed my advertisement, and, though he knew nothing of the estate, having but recently arrived in London, he seemed interested, and, as a stranger, had a claim upon my hospitality."

66

"Well, Mr. Bodley," said I, some of your guests, I fancy, will, like me, have to thank your generosity for saving them from a solitary Christmas - dinner, All of these names which you have mentioned are only names to me, but it is pleasant to think that, | widely separated in interests and associations, we can yet find shelter under the common name and at the table of the head of the family. I must confess that I already feel drawn toward these different guests." Mr. Bodley looked pleased, and I continued: "It would be singular, would it not, if, being all of one family, we should each be, until today, unacquainted with one another? Do you know if these guests have ever met each other?"

Never, so far as I can learn," said Mr. Bodley. "It was a part of my plan to bring together those who have been especially solitary. The Byleses have only recently come to London from Paris. Mr. Pecker, as I said, is just from Madras, and M. Bodelet from Texas."

"M. Bodelet and I can claim common interests in part," said I, "for my brother once made a visit to San Antonio.-But, Mr. Umbelow"-and I turned to that gentleman, who was standing apart, wholly oblivious to our conversation-" Mr. Umbelow, we have been noticing the remote places from which Mr. Bodley's guests to-day come: pray, where is your home"

"My home? I was born of American parents at Kawaike, in the Hawaiian Islands, and near there my father's family still re

66

sides; and yet "-and here his rather blank face was lighted with an expressive smilemy birthplace would be hard to mark exactly, for I was really born in a fishing-boat, off the coast. I lay to this fact the destiny of my life, which has been to wander over many lands. Notwithstanding a strong lik ing for a permanent and quiet residence, I have been traveling in England, looking up the graves of my ancestors, who are, as Mr. Bodley has told you, Bodleys."

"Mr. Umbelow saw my advertisement," said the old gentleman, "and called upon me. I explained to him that he had no title to the estate, and he was pleased to disown any strong expectations."

"I had none at all," said Mr. Umbelow, "although it would have been pleasant, certainly, to drop into the line of an old English family, and find myself, without great derangement, moving along in the sluggish current of such a family. I could have adapted myself, even when coming from so brand new a country as the Hawaiian Islauds, to the old establishment."

I thought I saw an uneasy look in Mr. Bodley's eye, and, remembering Tyrel's injunction, I tried to steer the conversation clear of the reef.

"It is singular," I said, " to see how we Americans fumble after the cord that binds us to the old mother-country. Perhaps it is more noticeable in New England men. We seem to be always coming back here after something we left behind when we moved over in the seventeenth century. The Mayflower was not quite large enough to bring all the household gods, and we have been fetching away old chips and relics of the homestead ever since. Did you not have a strange familiarity with scenes and names here, as if you were visiting a place left in childhood? I recollect very well my first experience. I came over in a ship to London, and, on landing, went to my bankers to look for letters. Twisting about among the streets, and reading the familiar names, I happened all at once to look up, and there was St. Paul's towering above me! It took me by surprise, and the England of my dreams rushed upon me, obliterating for a moment the England I landed on."

"Yes, I know all about that," said Mr. Umbelow; "but the effect was less forcible on me, because I had already passed through the same experience in New York. You may smile, but New York and Boston, to an American born at Kawaike, are the London of an American born on the Atlantic coast. I landed at the Battery, and I felt as if I were in a dream. I walked up Broadway, and could hardly believe my senses."

I laughed, and said:

"Distance must have great power of enchantment if it can throw an air of romance over New York; but I am afraid one must look eastward to see it. From this shore our western country seems very sharply defined, and so extremely new and clean-cut that no moss has grown over it yet. I came here to escape from newness."

"" Antiquity is the product of our recollection multiplied by the objects about us," said Mr. Umbelow, somewhat oracularly. "I can

generally produce it wherever I am, but it will have more sway over my mind as I have less occasion to shut my eyes. The world grows older every day, and the accumulation of the centuries constitutes our antiquity. Yesterday is antique to us; day before yesterday less so, because it needed its own particle of incrustation to add to the general sum. That is antiquity of time, and is one factor. I call it the multiplicand because, while an absolute quantity, it is capable of being multiplied by place-a multiplier which varies with the number of social and political sponges which have rubbed over it." Mr. Umbelow hesitated here, perceiving that he was getting too deep for himself, and felt about for a rock to recover his breath on. "That is the reason, Mr. Bodley," he said, with his one smile, which appeared to spread over his face only when there was a splashing about very far below the surface-" that is the reason why I had hoped I might possess the estate. It would have been pleasant to put myself in the position of an English gentleman for a season, and read Nature and humanity by the help afforded in such a station."

"I may not precisely enter into your meaning," said Mr. Bodley, with a gentle apology for his dullness; "but you are quite right in supposing that no place affords a better position for looking out upon the world, and I trust that I may have the pleas. ure and honor of entertaining you very often at Bodley Hall."

"That is well," said Mr. Umbelow, in his deliberating manner, as if weighing all matters as they were presented to him in the delicate scales of his nice judgment; "but there is an essential difference between mere residence and possession. My object would not be attained without actual ownership of the Bodley estate.”

"But that is quite impossible-quite impossible," said Mr. Bodley, with firmness.

Still," said Mr. Umbelow, apparently talking most to himself, "I do not see how else one could perfectly identify himself with the spirit of historic England."

"Mr. Umbelow," said I, anxious to avoid an outbreak from Mr. Bodley, who I thought was exercising great self-control, "I once knew a gentleman from the Hawaiian Islands. I wonder if you ever chanced to meet him? He was a land-agent when I knew him, though formerly he had been an auctioneerMr. Silas Kennicut."

"I knew him," said he well. He married my sister. self finally."

"I knew him He killed him

"Killed himself!" cried Mr. Bodley. "Oh, how dreadful-how dreadful, Mr. Umbelow! Tell me, what made him do it-what made him do it? Was his body found?"

He uttered this so excitedly, repeating each phrase, that I was startled, and Mr. Umbelow looked blanker than ever. The change from quietness to confusion in Mr. Bodley was so swift that I could think of nothing else than the similar scene when he started from his sleep the night before. Now, as then, he found himself soothed, for his daughter came quickly into the room, and, without regarding us, sat beside her father,

and stilled his agitation with her presence, affording, it seemed to me, a shelter to which the trembling animal could run and hide there securely. My companion and I sat in awkward silence, and I felt a guilty confusion embarrassing me as if I had been party to some infamous attempt on my host's happiness. Miss Bodley turned to me presently, and said:

"So, Mr. Penhallow, have you brought your Christmas spirit with you?"

I might have thought the words ironical had I not seen her face, and heard, too, a peculiar tenderness in her voice which I knew, though unconsciously given to me, was really meant for her father's jarred ear. I felt my own voice grow gentler as I said:

"If peace and good will make up the spirit. Last evening you quite exorcised the evil spirit that was in me. I hardly think I should have been fit to come to-day otherwise. One needs a sort of private Christmas sometimes to qualify him for taking part in the general rejoicing. But if you find me extremely melancholy, pray remember that excess of joy weeps, excess of sorrow laughs.'"

“Ah," said she, and her face lit up with an animated smile, "Blake taught you that."

Here Mr. Umbelow, as if neither of us had been speaking, went on with the conversation which had been interrupted by Mr. Bodley's nervous exclamation:

"I was telling Mr. Penhallow about a common friend of ours, Miss Bodley, when you came in-"

"Is it not singular," said I, rudely tripping up his speech," that Mr. Unbelow and I, who never met before, should within a few minutes discover a friend in common? I have always had a notion that any two civilized persons coming together, and chancing upon the right line of talk, will discover not merely that they have tastes in common, but that they have friends in common, or are joined by some personal thread, even though they may be very widely removed in position and circumstance. I am ready to wager that I shall be able to establish some such connection with the next guest that arrives."

"You will have an opportunity to test your theory now," she said, "for I hear some one in the passage."

“Mr. Umbelow, too," said I, hurriedly. "He will discover at least the acquaintance of an acquaintance."

The door opened, and Mr. Bodley and his daughter rose to receive the guest, who was presented as Mr. Henry Pecker, from Madras. He was a little, bald-headed man, pinched in every part as if he had been an apple hung in an Indian sun, and yet with a merry sort of squeak of a voice which intimated that the juices were by no means dried up in him. 'Mr. Umbelow," said Fear, mischievously, "is, I believe, not so well known to you, Mr. Pecker; but Mr. Penhallow here is an old acquaintance, I think."

64

I knit my eyebrows deprecatingly, for I did not want my search to be, obstructed by any untimely advertisement of it.

"Indeed!" said Mr. Pecker, looking inquiringly at me through his glasses, and yet with an eager expression as if he would be

delighted only to recognize me. He shook my hand fervently, but was obliged to say, reluctantly: "I am afraid you will think poor. ly-very poorly of my memory, Mr. Penhal low; but I have been a dozen years away from home. Could I have met you in Ma dras ?"

Oh, no," said I, coloring. "Miss Bodley is probably referring to our connection as members of the widely-scattered Bodley family."

"Ah! quite so," said he, relieved. "Yes, blood is thicker than water. I have been so long away, and lived so much alone, that it is a great pleasure, a very great pleasure, to find myself on my return at once in the midst of my own relations.-Mr. Bodley, my dear sir," and he grasped his hand again, "I must thank you once more for this hospita ble-this very hospitable reception." Mr. Pecker emphasized his hearty shake of Mr. Bodley's hand with another little quaver of a shake afterward, just as he was perpetually going behind his adjectives and giving them a push with some expletive.

Mr. Umbelow, meanwhile, maintained a blank composure-his face being a high stone-wall behind which all sorts of impor taut operations might be going on unknown to the careless observer. For myself, I was wondering how I should establish my connec tion, for I never had known a soul who had been in Madras, so far as I could tell, and this Mr. Pecker had been an exile for twenty years. I could only bide my time.

"You are heartily welcome," said old Paul Bodley, with as cordial a manner, "and I hope often to have the pleasure of receiv ing you at Bodley Hall. I trust this is but the beginning of our family gatherings." I could not smile as I looked at him, nor, I saw, did his daughter, for the position which he took, so perfectly fitting if he had really been the bead of the family and in the ances tral ball, carried such a touch of melancholy to my mind, since I knew it to be an halluci nation, that I felt strong compassion for him, and an unwillingness that his nature should be laid bare to those who might be unsympa. thizing. Mr. Pecker, I felt, could be relied on, but I distrusted Umbelow, and I wondered how the rest would turn out. The whole occasion for the first time appeared to me such a painful mockery, and so liable to some disastrous conclusion, that I felt an instinetive apprehension that it could not be carried through. Indeed, the unreality of the fourdation on which the whole gathering rested gave me the sense of acting a part, assisting at some ghostly banquet, where each guest was aware of the illusiveness of the scene, and aware, too, that the rest were equally cognizant of it, while yet none whispered his secret to his neighbor. I resolved for my part that I would do my best to keep the word Bodley out of the conversation, and to make the dinner as little as possible like supposed family gathering. How vain the resolution!

"Did you ever see Bodley Hall?" asked Mr. Pecker, turning to me.

"No," I replied; "I have traveled but very little in the English country. My home is in America. Have you ever visited my

"Oh, quite so," said the naturalist, smiling cheerfully; no simpler though than I, I warrant. But you see my difficulty. Here I arrive in London with a ship-load-a large ship-load, I may say-of specimens in alcohol, and, bless you, I have no place to put them! I saw Mr. Bodley's advertisement yesterday; I knew my mother was a Bodley, and I thought,' Why, if here is Bodley Hall vacant, it is just the place, the very place, for my collection.' I did not have hopes, but I called. To be sure, our good host here told me that my chance for that was gone, but at least I've got a Christmas dinner, a jolly Christmas-dinner, by being a Bodley." And he rubbed his hands.

“Mr. Pecker," said Mr. Umbelow, at this point, "did I understand you to say that you had been collecting in India ?”

"Just so, sir. I suppose there is not a creeping thing, a lovely creeping thing, that I have not a specimen of. They are all packed in tins of alcohol. It would do you good to see them. Are you interested in reptiles or insects?"

"And were you at Nâmkal in April, 1840?" pursued Mr. Umbelow, looking straight before him, as if his thoughts were not to be turned to the right or left.

'April, 1840 ?—to be sure. I got a magnificent, a truly magnificent Phyllium siccifolium. I remember."

"In the inclosure of the old Hyder Ali fortress on the high rock," said Umbelow, "I saw you."

"What! what!" said the naturalist. "You don't mean- To be sure! I see it all now. I remember you perfectly. You were copying that griffin on the doorway. Dear me! this is singular. And, I suppose, we were cousins all the time, and I never have seen you since!"

"I did not know your name," said Umbelow, "but I have recalled your face since you came in."

"So you and Mr. Umbelow have met before?" said Mr. Bodley, and I really thought he looked a trifle disappointed.

"Only for a half-hour, a delightful halfhour," said Mr. Pecker, getting up and shaking Umbelow's hand, which he had to pick up and shake for himself, it hung so passive.

"This is too funny," said Fear, aside to me. "I begin to believe you will make your point." I said nothing, but my heart misgave me. Once more the door was opened, and two new-comers were presented. low countrymen of yours, Mr. Penhallow," said Mr. Bodley, on introducing us, and his daughter added:

"Fel

"We're New England people, sir," said Mr. Byles, half jerking his reluctant wife forward on his arm. "Yankees of pure blood. I was raised in New Hampshire; my wife here was a Bodley, descended from old Governor Bodley, and lived in Massachusetts, down in Scituate."

"Well," said I, " Mrs. Byles's home is not far from mine. I live at Roxbury, near Boston, and I once spent a summer in Scituate."

"You don't say so!" said Mr. Byles, with animation. "I haven't seen a neighbor this long while. Penhallow ?—I don't remember the name. I knew a man by the name of Penniman, near where I lived at Plymouth."

I was not over-anxious to discover a very close connection with Mr. Byles, who seemed rather disagreeable at first sight, being, to use an expressive Americanism, so 'slicked up' that I felt there was an unpleasant nature which would show itself palpably through his 'slicking,' and, withal, so wiry and fidg ety was he that I began to catch some of his uneasy workings assert themselves in my But, feeling my chance with be rather slight, as it seemed assert a connection on the

own nerves.

Mr. Pecker to hardly fair to ground that I knew Silas Kennicut, and he married the sister of a man who spent half an hour with Mr. Pecker in a ruined fortress in India, though, at a pinch, this would answer I was disposed to take some small credit out of this new-comer; so I turned to Fear and said, with a twinkle :

"Is it not singular, Miss Bodley, that Mr. Byles and I should have discovered so soon a common acquaintance, for I find that he knows a Mr. Penniman, who, I have no doubt, is the very person with whom I spent a summer once in the White Mountains.-Mr. Byles, is your friend Mr. Penniman, Mr. Job Penniman, who had a farm at Campton?

"No, sir, his name was not Job. I don't know anybody by the name of Penniman in Campton. I don't know anybody in Campton at all. Where is Campton?"

"Why," said I, rather disconcerted, "not far from Plymouth, in New Hampshire, where you said you lived."

"Oh, dear, no! I was raised away up at Colebrooke, but I lived down in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the Pilgrims landed. Don't you know the place? I taught school there."

Miss Bodley was laughing behind her hand, and I was almost resolved to know a Penniman in Plymouth, but I feared the sharp tongue of Mr. Byles. He turned, however, to Mr. Bodley, while his wife answered Miss Bodley's questions, and, as Messrs. Pecker and Umbelow were engaged in a corner, I had leisure to notice the groups while listening to Mr. Byles. The pairs were oddly consorted, as if each one had chanced upon his or her opposite pole. Mrs. Byles, for instance, was so frightened, so anxious and weary-looking, sending stray glances toward her husband, as if she feared him, and yet feared he might run away from her; she answered in such a confused manner, that she brought into stronger relief the quiet, self

vis; nor was the personal contrast less striking, for Mrs. Byles was angular and worn out in appearance, looking, if so far-fetched an illustration may be permitted, like a dustcloth that once had been an ornamental apron; and naturally, since I learned afterward that she had descended by degrees from the place of a household pet to that of a poor woman leading a hard life, put by her busband to uses for which she never had been made. Mr. Pecker, also in the corner, keeping his bald head excitedly nodding, and his hands rubbing over Mr. Umbelow's talk, and occasionally enlivening his own by taking little liberties with Mr. Umbelow's knees, patting them with his palm, tapping them with his knuckles, or bearing down on them with the point of his forefinger, was so very animated that Mr. Umbelow's blank gravity and stolid composure seemed a sort of target, at which he was practising.

But perhaps the two by whom I sat were most markedly opposed. Mr. Bodley was the listener mainly, and an amiable deference, born of native courtesy, was so blended with à certain dignity of manner that I could not help thinking the worse of Mr. Byles, that he could sit directly opposite to him and be so little impressed with his nature; few, surely, would fail to be won into some show of respect, but Mr. Byles addressed him exactly as he did me, with a manner which was insolent from its undeviating self-assertion. He was a tall, coarse, ungainly man, with the largest hands I ever measured with my eye, and he seemed to plant himself immovably upon the rock of his own selfish purpose. And yet Mr. Byles, if you took him at his word, was a man of broad views and grand schemes. He was laying one down at this time to Mr. Bodley and myself-it was the great purpose, he assured us, of his life, and for the sake of it, he told us very soon, he had consented to join this Christmas company. It was through science, be declared, that the great development of the world was to come about; he had just begun to collect the facts, and out of the facts were to be obtained the great laws of life, and these laws again were to be redistributed, through the intelligent appreciation of man, in their influence on the human race, but in a more equable manner than at present. Our age was one of experiment, of fact-gathering, and he was a humble (but he uttered the word humble, as it were, with the shake of a fist) laborer in the field. He was collecting the facts concerning MAN. "Yes," he added, raising his voice, "he was intending to collect Man himself."

"Mr. Bodley," said he, at this point, pausing and fastening him with his eye until I saw that the old gentleman began to feel uneasy, "I am prepared to give you an opportunity to share in this great work. You have it in your power to make the name of Bodley the most noble in the world's history, and I will tell you how. My mission is, as I just said, to collect the facts concerning man. We must get the differentia of mankind. But man is scattered; he is found under various influences, some more, some less advantageous to him. We must bring him together.

We must bring him into one place, and permit him to have the same advantages and the same conditions of growth. If I may express myself, not in scientific but in figurative terms, man is now dismembered. The wild Indian of the Western world, and the savage generally, is the legs; the American settler is the arms, Catholic Christendom is the body, and Protestant Christendom is the head; bring these scattered members together, and we shall begin to get an idea of MAN. My plan is not a mere dream, it is a practical scheme. I will collect specimens of mankind from all the great races for the foundation; next I will gather specimens of man as a worker, and will show the first steps in human improvement; then I will obtain examples of man as a poet; and, finally, crown the whole with a few choice illustrations of the philosopher. I will obtain each by appeals to the appropriate desires; my race-men, being pure specimens, will be enticed through their appetites; my workers will form an exhibition of the arts; my poets will contend for a prize, as in the ancient games; and my philosophers-they shall be a congress to discuss the subjects which will be so readily prompted by the occasion, the whole forming a glorious pyramid, at the top of which will sit this small and select body. The result will be man, man as he is, and man as an egg, out of which shall come something even more wonderful! Mr. Bodley, there is a place waiting for this gathering, a place raised up, I may say, for this end, and there is a meaning in this acquaintance which I have accidentally formed with you. Here am I with my thought, which has only begun to open in all its relations, and here are you with Bodley Hall and its fair expanse of field and flood to complete my thought by making it an act."

Mr. Byles paused. The conversation of the rest had gradually been driven out by his voice, and he found himself the orator of this small assembly. I looked at the others. Mrs. Byles seemed disturbed and unhappy. Mr. Pecker was listening with an astonishment which found no sympathy, apparently, in Mr. Umbelow, who was immovable. Old Mr. Bodley was restive under Mr. Byles's eye, and turned hesitatingly toward his daughter. She answered, composedly, for him:

"Your plan, Mr. Byles, is one of genius, certainly. Have you any specimens ready to set up in this living museum?"

"I have merely been surveying the field as yet," he replied, "and have my eye on a few good localities. I shall travel, and I propose to establish a central agency here in London, to which I can forward my specimens. But we have devoted our life and means to this end, and we shall not be backward to make sacrifices. Mrs. Byles and myself will form a part of the convention. She will illustrate woman as house-keeper, and I, besides my necessary duties as general manager, shall occasionally take my place in the congress of philosophers, to discuss the va rious facts and problems presented."

We were all staring now, and Miss Bodley was getting very red between her indignation in behalf of Mrs. Byles and her sense

of the absurdity, when happily two more guests were announced, and an elderly, precisely-dressed gentlewoman entered, who was introduced as Miss Northumberland, and after her came the lawyer Tyrel. The latter quite surprised me by the change in his appearance, for he was decidedly the best dressed of the company, and carried himself so haughtily that I waited quite timidly for a second introduction. Indeed, we all rather gave way before him, except Mr. Byles, who seemed incapable of being subdued by any thing or anybody. The disturbance of introduction over, we settled into a decorous and awkward silence. I found myself next to Mrs. Byles, while her husband had attached himself to Tyrel, and I could hear the word MAN occasionally coming in, in loud capitals.

"Your husband seems very much ab sorbed in his schemes," I said, politely, to my neighbor.

'Oh, very, very," said she, fanning herself hurriedly. "I don't quite understand them all. But, tell me, this estate-I don't know much about it, but is it a house in the country?"

She spoke in a whisper, and I answered in like manner, as if we were telling confidences to each other:

"I really cannot say precisely. I believe there is a Bodley Hall."

"But I suppose Mr. Bodley and his daughter will move there in the summer?" "I really cannot say," said I, again; "but perhaps Miss Bodley could tell you."

"Oh, don't!" said she-" don't ask ber. I suppose she will, and I was thinking, if Mr. Byles should have to travel, he might like to have me stay somewhere there, and—and you know I might do some house-keeping, though I have a great deal to learn. I think I could learn in the country."

"Was the country your home?" I asked. 'Oh, I remember; your husband told us you lived in Scituate."

"Hush!" she whispered, lower still. "Won't you move a little round, sir? the light hurts my eyes."

"Mr. Byles is her sun, then," I thought, as I obeyed her gesture, which placed me as a sort of shield from him.

Then she looked at me with a simpering glance, which appeared on her worn face like a poor remnant of some happier days, and said:

player placed on her knees, working the bel lows in an ungainly fashion with her elbows while performing. My parents had said she was spoiled by flattery, and that her mother was acting very foolishly in letting her grow up idle; but then all parents were not so wise as mine. I had laughed at her then, and refused to be petted by her as she wished. And here she was, blown by so singular a wind across the water to my side in this chance gathering! Certainly it was she; and yet what a transformation she had undergone from that giggling, simpering girl, ignorant of labor or care, to this weary, forlorn, and faded woman, chained to Mr. Byles's warchariot, and evidently quite at his mercy, if he had that attribute!

"So you do not recollect me?" said she, petulantly, as I looked half wondering at her. "I knew you as soon as I came into the room, but I didn't show it ;" and she looked at me with a half-cunning look.

66

Yes, I do," said I; "but you must not think it strange that I should hesitate a moment; it was so long ago that I was at your house, and so wholly out of my mind that I should meet you here. But how long have you been married? I had not heard of it.”

"Ten years," said she, with a sigh, looking at me in a languishing manner which cov ered a real weariness, and yet was absurdly affected. "Two summers after your pa was at our house."

I felt an instinctive dread lest she should make me her confidant, and hurried to change the subject.

"And your sisters-are they married?"

"No, not one of them," said she, “and I was the youngest." Poor, silly thing! She was just going to tell me her trials, and now a flutter of the old vanity blew them away. "Mr. Byles is very learned," she went on, fanning herself in a stately manner, “and is in correspondence with a great many distin | guished men. He came to Scituate one summer and stopped at Mr. Vassal's, but he spent most of his time at our house, talking with pa at first."

"Maria!" sounded Mr. Byles's harsh voice, and the poor thing dropped her fan and answered hurriedly

"Well, Mr. Byles."

"I want to introduce you to my friend

Mr. Tyrel."

The smile and the name brought back to me a dim recollection. I had not scanned her face before for a reminiscence, but now I did recall the person of one whom I had not seen since the summer which I had spent, when a boy, a dozen years back, in the little village of Scituate. We had staid at the Wetherels', a farmer-family with five or six daughters, the youngest of whom was ten years my senior; but, like every boy, I had noticed traits of character, and had set down this Maria Wetherel as a very silly girl, because she wore long curls and turned up her eyes, and made doleful music with a singular musical instrument, a melodeon without legs, as I suppose it might be called, which the

"This is my wife, Mr. Tyrel. Mrs. Byles was a Bodley."

Tyrel stood up in all his magnificence and made a low bow to Mrs. Byles, handing her s chair with great empressement. I moved toward Miss Bodley, who was sitting with her fa ther and Miss Northumberland, but both groups were near me. Mrs. Byles, I saw, was thrown into a divided confusion, half timid next to her husband, and half flattered by Tyrel's unnecessarily courteous manner. Fear had seen the introduction, and our eyes met She was vexed at herself for that, I was sure; but she saw in my face a response to her own opinion of our neighbor's conduct. She