A friend of mine, with whom I lately compared churchyards' experiences, gave me a little narrative of one. I give it in his own words: Arriving about dark one evening I observed a general agitation, as if a beehive were pouring forth its swarming colonists; and as I proceeded down the straggling street towards the sign of "The Jolly Miller," the whole population of the place seemed streaming in the opposite direction of the churchyard which I had passed at the entrance of the village. Men, women, and children were hurrying along with an appearance of eager trepidation, and there was a general hum of voices, though everyone seemed to speak below his natural key. The children were running along close to their mothers, holding fast by their gowns, and every minute pressing nearer and looking up in their faces with eyes of fearful inquiry. As the different groups scudded swiftly past me I caught the disjointed words, "A ghost!" and "The churchyard," and "Old Andrew," and "Ten feet high," and "Very awful." Half tempted as I was to turn with the stream and wind up my day's sport with a ghost hunt, but the sign of "The Jolly Miller" waving before me and the brown loaf and foaming can so naturally depicted thereon, were irresistible attractions to a poor Piscator who had fasted since early morning, and who as day declined had followed the windings of the stream for many a weary mile to seek rest and refreshment at the village hostelry. It was well for me that I arrived not in equestrian equipage, for neither landlord nor ostler were visible about the large old house or the adjacent stable-yard; but I needed not such attendance, so stooping with my shoulder-load of rod, basket, and landing-net as I stept down one step into the low heavy old porch, I passed straight on to the kitchen, where a blazing fire in the huge gaping chimney gave me a cheerful welcome, though neither there nor in the adjoining taproom could I espy signs of any living creature. So I called lustily and thumped the

end of my fishing-rod against the heavy oak table and dark wooden partition, till at last came hurrying forth from an inner chamber a little old woman, whose sharp shrivelled face showed no mood of sweet complacency; but a few words intimating my intention of staying at her house that night smoothed as if by magic half the wrinkles in her face, and put her in such good humour that she would fain have installed me into the chilling magnificence of the parlour, whose sanded floor and dismal fireless grate nodding with plumes of fennel, like the enchanted helmet in the castle of Otranto, I was obliged to glance at, though the first glimpse sent me back with shivering eagerness to the comforts of the kitchen hearth, where at last I was permitted to settle myself; while mine hostess spread for me a little clean table with a snow-white cloth, and set about preparing my savoury supper of fried eggs and rashers.

It was not till I had despatched two courses of these, with a proportionate quantum of good ale, that I found leisure while attacking the picturesque ruins of a fine old Cheshire cheese, to question my hostess respecting those signs of popular agitation which had excited my curiosity. My inquiry set wide open the floodgates of her eloquence and inclination.

"Well I might ask," she said; "but for her part she was almost ashamed to tell me what fools the folks made of themselves-her master among 'em-who was old enough to know better, Lord help him! than to set off night after night galloping after a ghost, with Bob Ostler at his heels and that idle hussey Beckey leaving her to mind the house and look to everything, and be robbed and murdered for what they knew and for what quotha?" She wished when their time came they might lie half as quiet in their graves as old Andrew did in his for all their nonsensical talk about his walking o' nights.

I waited patiently till the "Larum" had unwound itself; then, taking up that part of the invective which more immediately related to the

haunted churchyard and its quiet tenant, I got the old lady gradually into the mood of storytelling; and from after-gleanings from the other inhabitants of the village I succeeded in stringing together a tolerably connected narrative.

Andrew Cleave, whose remains had been interred the preceding week in Redburn churchyard, was the oldest man in its large and populous parish, and had been one of the most prosperous among its numerous class of thriving and industrious husbandmen. His little property, which had descended from father to son for many generations, consisted of a large and comfortable cottage, situated on the remote verge of the village common, a productive garden, and a few fields which he cultivated so successfully rising up early and late taking rest, that by the time he had attained the middle period of life he was enabled to rent a score more acres; had got together a pretty stock of cattle; had built a barn; and enclosed a rick yard; and drove as fine a team as any in the parish; and was generally addressed by the title of "Farmer Cleave;" then-and not till then-and still with great deliberation, he began to look about him for a partner. A help meet, in the true homely sense of the word, was the wife he desired, and it was all "Love's labour lost" that many a wealthy farmer's flaunting daughter and many a gay damsel of the second table from my lords and the squires set their caps at wary Andrew and spoke sweet words to him when chance threw them in his path, and looked sweet looks at him when he sat within eye-shot at church in his own old oaken pew hard by the clerk's desk, with his tall bony person erect as a poker and his coal black hair combed smooth down over his forehead, till it met the intersecting line of two straight jetty eyebrows almost meeting over the high-curved nose and overhanging a pair of eyes dark, keen, and lustrous; but withal, of a severe and saturnine expression, well in keeping with that of the closely-compressed lips and angular jaws. Those lips were not made to utter tender nonsense, nor those eyes for ogling; and the latter were sharp and deceiving enough to find out such qualifications as he had laid out to himself as indispensable in his destined spouse, though money was not a paramount consideration, yet a small matter by way of portion could not come amiss. And Andrew naturally weighed in with her other perfections the twenty years' savings of the vicar's housekeeper, whose age was about his own and who was acknowledged to be the best housewife in the parish, having come from a famous cheese country, whose fashions she had successfully introduced at Redburn Vicarage.

Miss Dinah was a staid quiet person, not given to gadding and gossiping. "Marry in haste and repent at leisure" was another of Andrew's favourite sayings; so he took another year to consider the matter. But as all things earthly come to an end, so did Andrew Cleave's wooing, and as the discreet Dinah had had

ample time for consideration the favoured suitor was not kept long on the rack of uncertainty; and the third Sunday, which completed the bans, saw Miss Dinah installed as Andrew Cleave's mistress of his hitherto lonely dwelling. He had no reason to repent his choice, for Dame Fortune had hooked together for once two kindred souls. And it seemed as if Andrew had only reunited to himself a sometime divided portion of his own nature, so marvellously did he and his prudent Dinah sympathise in their views, habits, and principles. Thrift-thrift-thrift and the accumulation of worldly substance was the end and aim of all their thoughts, dreams, and undertakings; yet they were rigidly just and honest in all their dealings, even beyond the strict letter of the law, of which they scorned to take advantage in a doubtful matter, and Andrew Cleave had been known more than once to come forward to the assistance of the distressed (on good security indeed), but on more liberal terms than could have been expected from one of his parsimonious habits, or than were offered by persons of more reputed generosity. Moreover, he was accounted a very religious man, and he surely accounted himself "a very pious Christian" as if a sad and grave aspect, solemn speech much abounding in scriptural phrases, slow delivery, erect deportment, and unsocial reserve, constitute fair claims to this distinction; moreover, he was a regular church-goer and indefatigable reader of the bible (of the old testament and the epistles in particular), fasted rigidly on all days appointed by the church, boxed the ears of all the little boys who whistled within his hearing on Sabbaths and Saints' days, said immoderately long graces before and after meals, and sang hymns by the hour, though he had no more voice than a cracked pitcher and not ear enough to distinguish between the tunes of the 100th psalm and "Molly, put the kettle on."

It had been the misfortune of Andrew Cleave to have imbibed from his parents narrow views of Christianity, and their early death had left him an unsociable being, unloving, unloved and unconnected, till he changed his single for a married life. "Habits are stubborn things," and by the time a man is turned of forty his ruling passions grow so haughty there is no clipping of his wings. Now Andrew was forty-three when he entered the pale of matrimony, and the staid Dinah, three years his senior, had no wish to clip them, being his very counterpart-his "mutual head" in all essential points; so without a spark of what silly swains and simple maidens call love, our serious couple jogged on together in a perfect railroad of monotonous conformity, and Andrew Cleave might have gone to the grave unconscious that hearts were made for any other purpose than to circulate the blood if the truth of a son in the second year of his union had not opened up in his bosom such a fountain of love and tenderness as gushed out like water from the flinty rock, and became thenceforth the master-passion and humanizing feeling of his stern and powerful character," The mother's fondness-and she was

a fond mother-was nothing compared with that with which the father doated on his babe; and he would rock the cradle or hush it in his arms, or sing to it by the hour, though the lullaby seldom varied from the 100th psalm; and as he danced it to the same exhilarating tune it was a wonder that the little Josiah clapped his hands and crowed with antic mirth instead of comporting himself with the solemnity of a parish clerk in swaddling clothes. It was strange and pleasant to observe how the new and holy feeling of parental love penetrated like a fertilizing dew the hitherto hard insensible nature of Andrew Cleave; how it extended its sweet influence beyond the exciting object, the infant darling, to his fellow-creatures in general, disposing his heart to kindliness and pity, and almost to sociability; in the latter virtue he made so great progress as to invite a few neighbours to the christening feast, charging his dame to treat them handsomely to the best of everything, and he himself, for the first time in his life on hospitable thoughts intent, pressed, and smiled, and played the courteous host to a miracle; and sometimes on his way home of an evening he would stop and exchange a few words with an acquaintance at his cottage door, attracted by the sight of some chubby boy, with whose short limbs and infant vigour he would compare in his mind's eye the healthful beauty of his own urchin. But great, indeed, was the amazement of Mrs. Cleave when Andrew, who had always set his face like a flint against the whole tribe of mendicants, making it a rule not only to chase them from his own door but to consign them if possible to the wholesome correction of the parish stocks, actually went the length of bestowing a comfortable meal, a night's shelter in an outhouse, and a bed of clean straw on a soldier's widow who was travelling with her babe in her arms towards the far-distant home of its dead father. Mrs. Cleave stared in strange perplexity, and said something about charity beginning at home and "coming to want," and harbouring idle husseys and their brats; but Andrew was peremptory, for his eye had glanced from the poor soldier's fatherless babe to the cherished' creature at that time nestling in his own bosom. So the widow was warmed and fed, and left a blessing on her benefactor; who, on his part, failed not to accompany his parting "God speed you!" and the small piece of money which accompanied it with an impressive lecture on the sinfulness of want and pauperism, and a comfortable assurance that they were always deserved manifestations of divine displeasure.

Just as the little Josiah had reached his second year, Andrew Cleave was called on to resign the wife of his bosom, who went the way of all flesh. After a short but sharp illness she had so fully realized all the calculations that had decided Andrew to choose her for his mate, that he regretted her loss very sincerely; but resignation, as he justly observed, was the duty of a Christian, and Andrew was wonderfully resigned and composed even in the early days of his bereavement, throwing out many edifying comments on

the folly and sinfulness of immoderate grief, together with sundry apposite remarks befitting his own circumstances and a few proverbial illustrations and observations, such as "Misfortunes never come alone," for my poor dame was taken at night and the old gander was found dead in the morning; and he failed not to sum up as sources of rational consolation that it had pleased the Lord to spare her till the boy ran alone, and Daizey's calf was weaned and all the bacon cured.

So Andrew buried his wife and was comforted, and from the night of her death he took his little son to his own bed and laid him in his mother's place; and long and fervent were the prayers he ejaculated before he went to rest, bending beside his sleeping child, and cautious and tender as a mother's kiss was that he imprinted on its innocent brow before he turned himself to slumber. Early in the morning an elderly widow, who had been used to cook his vituals and set the cottage to rights before his marriage, came to take up and tend the boy, and get breakfast for him and his father; and she was now detained through the day in the care of household concerns and of the motherless little one. She was a good and tender fostermother and a careful manager withal, falling readily into Andrew's ways and likings, a woman of few words, and content with little more than her meat and drink; and he had a feeling of snug satisfaction in locking her out every evening when she betook herself to sleep at her own cottage. Then was Andrew wont to turn back to his own solitary hearth, not evincing much taste for social enjoyment or any disposition again to barter his secure state of single blessedness for a chance in the matrimonial lottery; from which, having drawn a first-rate prize, it would have been presumptuous to expect a second. What with Jenny's help and his own ability he had not lived so long a bachelor without having acquired some skill in housewifery. He got on very comfortably, and for a living object to care for and to love, the little Josiah was to him wife, child, companion, everything; so Andrew continued faithful as a widowed turtle to the memory of his deceased Dinah, and the motherless boy throve as lustily as if he had continued to thrive under the maternal wing; he was in truth a fine sturdy little fellow, full of life and glee, and yet, as like Andrew as "two peas;" "the very moral of his father," said old Jenny,

only not so solemn like." He had Andrew's jetty eyebrows and black eyes, deep set under the broad projecting brow; but they looked out with roguish mirth from their shadowy cells, and the raven hair that like his father's almost touched his straight eyebrows clung clustering over them and round his little flat poll in a luxuriance of rich close glossy curls; his mouth was shaped like his father's, too, but Andrew's could never, even his childhood, have relapsed into such an expression of dimpled mirth as the boy's did ere it burst into that infectious gladness which rings to one's heart's core like a peal of merry bells, He was a fine little fellow,

kindlier and more social feelings which had struggled into being when the hard surface was partially thawed by the new sense of parental tenderness; but now he guarded him as misers hoard their gold. The boy, thus debarred from all communication save with his father and old Jenny, was nevertheless as happy as any child of the same age; he was full of animal spirits and invention, and completely ruled old Jenny in the absence of his father; and except at lesson times and on Sundays, had acquired more ascendancy over that stern father himself than Andrew any way suspected.

The interval between the boy's fourth and seventh year was perhaps the happiest in the whole lives of father and son; but that state of things could not continue. Andrew Cleave had aspiring views for his young Josiah, and it had always been his intention to give him the best of learning; in furtherance of which purpose he had looked about him, almost from the hour of his son's birth, for some respectable school | wherein to place him when his own stock of learning became insufficient. He at last pitched upon a grammar-school in the county-town about five miles from his own habitation, where the sons of respectable tradesmen and farmers were boarded and taught upon moderate terms; though, to do Andrew justice, saving considerations were not paramount with him when his son's welfare was concerned; and he was far more anxious to ascertain that his morals, as well as his learning, were attended to; and beside this, having ascertained that the boy would have an ample amount of wholesome food, it is not wonderful that Andrew Cleave threw the moderate terms as the third weight into the scale of determination. The greater number of the boys were only day-borders, but some went home on Saturdays, only to spend Sunday, and it was Andrew's private solace to think that the separation from his child would be rendered less painful by this weekly meeting. It had taken him fully six months, and sundry journeyings to and fro, to make all the arrangements with the master; but at last they were completed, and nothing remained but the trial-the bard, hard trial-of parting with that creature who constituted his all of earthly happiness: his wife had been taken from him, and he had shown himself a pattern of pious resignation, and now he was to part with his own for a season, and who could doubt that the temporary sacrifice would be made with stoical firmnessand so it should was Andrew's purpose; upon the strength of which he proceeded, with old Jenny's advice and assistance, to make requisite preparation for the boy's equipment: nay, he was so far master of himself as to rebuke the old woman's foolish fondness when she remarked how lonesome the cottage would seem when the dear child was gone. And he expressed himself the more wrathfully from the consciousness of a certain rising [unwonted] which half choked him as he went "meandering" on.

To the child himself he had not breathed a

syllable of his intentions; and yet more than once he had taken him on his knee to tell him of the approaching change; but something always occurred to defer the execution of his project. The boy stopped his mouth with kisses, or he prattled so there was no getting in a word edgeways, or it would do as well in the evening when he came home from the fields; but then, the young one came running to meet him, and had also so much to ask and tell, that the important communication was still delayed. In the morning, before he rose from his pillow he would tell it as the boy lay by his side; but then his little bedfellow nestled so lovingly that his voice died away into the very depths of his heart, and the words were yet unspoken.

At length he hit upon an opportunity which was sure to present itself ere long. The next time Josiah was refractory at his lessons, that very moment, in the strength of his indignation, he would tell him that he was to leave his father's roof. Alas! that fitting occasion was in vain laid wait for. Joseph truly did his best to forward it; but his father could not be angry and could not speak. At last, seriously angry with himself, humiliated at the triumph of human weakness to which he had hitherto boasted himself superior, Andrew departed, one morning, to his labours earlier than usual, having deputed to Jenny the task to which he feft himself unequal. All that morning the father's thoughts were with the child. He pictured to himself the first burst of distress, the inconsolable sorrow at the thought of parting, and he longed to return and clasp the boy to his heart and kiss off the tears from his dear face, and comfort him with soothing words and indulgent promises; but still as the fond impulse rose within him he wrestled with it manfully, and looked on his team as if to support himself in resolute forbearance: no wonder the furrows Andrew traced that day were the most uneven he had ever drawn since he had guided his own plough on his own acres. He kept firm to his post, however, till the usual dinnerhour, and even left the field, with his labourers, without deviating from his accustomed firm deliberate step till, just within sight of his cottage, he spied the little Josiah running forward to meet him. Then again he slackened his step, for his heart shrunk from the first burst of the boy's impetuous sorrow. But these feelings were soon exchanged for those of a more irritable nature when the merry urchin bounded towards him, with more than his usual exuberant glee, and the first words he distinguished were:

"Father, father, I'm going to school. I'm going to school, father; I'm going to school! When shall I go? Shall I go to-morrow? Shall I take my new clothes, father, and my hoop and lamb, and old Dobbin ?" A bitter pang shot through Andrew's heart-a bitter revulsion of feeling it was that he experienced. He made no allowance for the volatile nature of the child, its restless desire of change and love of novelty; he read only in the boy's exulting rapture that this his only child-the only creature