and read with the velocity of lightning. Then up the office to the cashier, with his hand full of bills; then down the office among the clerks, bustling, pushing, prying, ordering and directing; hands, arms, legs, eyes all busy; then out of the office to the warehouse-bang, bang; thence off to the Exchange, with bills, and advices, and "quotations" in his pocket, the latter of a kind which Mrs. Cardonald never dreamed of, or the" Avonian Swan" uttered-buying, bargaining, selling, questioning; never losing a minute of the day, or an opportunity arising from the variations of mercantile or monetary life, to push his interest and increase his wealth. Strange to say, he was a foxhunter, and rode keenly to the hounds on a little bitter thoroughbred, which carried his light weight over everything. Awkward in the saddle, but full of pluck, he stuck on marvellously, considering his loose seat; and I have been told it was quite a phenomenon to see him in full cry after a fox, as he rode boldly among the horsemen without either caution or skill, furiously bumping his saddle, his long coat-tails streaming over his horse's tail, his bright buttons shining in the sun, while his wide kerseymere trowsers, unstrapped and ambitious, curled up far beyond his yawning boot-tops, exposing his thin and bony legs encased in white cotton stockings to the knee; while his eyes were eagerly squinting and glaring above and below his large-rimmed loose spectacles, which kept hopping up and down the bridge of his nose, seeming to enjoy the sport as vivaciously as he who wore them. After one of these occasional hunts, he would return to Everton, where he resided, and dine; and then, before the cloth was removed, he was off for the office; swinging, and spinning, and rolling down Dale-street with a velocity proportionate to his eagerness; oftentimes jostling, and being jostled by post and person; escaping being run over at each crossing as if by a special interposition, and finally announcing his own safe arrival by a feu-de-joie of slam doors successively banged one after the other, till his green desk and chair received him, and he was buried up to his chin and spectacles in ship letters.

About three months after my in

VOL. XLVIII.-NO. CCLXXXVI.

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stallation in the office as 66 secretary," which mock title Gayston always conferred on me in his letters, I read in a London paper two paragraphs which produced in me some little interest if not emotion. The first was the marriage of Miss Cardonald to a Major Clithero of the 104th foot," at the parish church of St. Sampson, cum the Innocents, &c., &c., by the Archdeacon of Wells, assisted by the Rev. Romeo Macbeth Cardonald, brother of the bride, &c., &c."-" Valenciennes lace" or "Honiton," I forget which flowers," &c.-"splendid déjeûner," &c.-" new carriage and four beautiful greys," &c., &c.--" torch of Hymen and sweet Avonian Swan," &c.the whole paragraph so redolent of Mrs. Cardonald, that I could almost fancy I smelt the musk from the column of the newspaper. So she had cast off the unfortunate Gilbert! Well, I was glad of this, for cold and heartless as she was, I should have grieved to see her wedded to such a craven and a traitor as I felt assured my unhappy cousin was. Afterwards I learned that her fastidious brother, the Rev. Romeo Macbeth, had objected to some of Mr. Kildoon's antecedents; and the gallant major just coming in at this dubious interval with a very red coat, a very long sword, and a very determined and Mars-like manner, had carried off this Venus in the chariot of Hymen; and a wife more fitted for military society, or more formed for barrack-life, he could not have found within the girth of merry England.

The other paragraph, which held my mind on the wings of thought a much longer time, was to the effect that "the Honorable Mr. Pendarvis and his daughter had arrived at Edinburgh, after a protracted tour in the Highlands."

Could these be my Snowdonian friends? Surely it was, for they had mentioned in that warmly-remembered, and not-to-be-forgotten mountain walk, that they were bound for Scotland to pay some visits, and explore the passes and gorges of the western and northern Highlands,— whither, if truth be told, my thoughts had too often travelled after them and with them. I had laboured hard to subdue this feeling, and at times deemed I had successfully mastered

DD

it, and buried it in the grave of cold despair; yet at times memory would come and exhume it, and hope would dress it all over with bright flowers, and both together would sing a song of triumph over the tomb of my vanquished resolution. And then again my plan was to apply myself more sedulously than ever to my stated official labours, and brush down all these aerial buildings with a flap of my grey goose-quill, or drown them in the capacious leaden inkbottle which stood upon my desk.

Among the young men of the office were many nice lads, and some of them cadets of the best families in Cheshire and Staffordshire. They were all very kind and attentive to me; but the one I took most interest in, from his extreme frankness and manliness of character, was my first acquaintance, Paul Diaz or Dyce, as he was popularly called. He had been well educated, and spoke English fluently, though like a foreigner; he was about my own age, a powerful athlete, but good-humoured, artless and pacific, unless much provoked. He was the eldest of six sons; his father, he told me, was a wine merchant at Lisbon, and I believe had as many children as King Priam ; and moreover was a very struggling man. Diaz was as fond of the water as a Newfoundland dog, and numerous were the sailings and rowings we had together on the breast of the muddy and rapid Mersey, between and after office hours. When we had become a little intimate, I called him "the Campeador" after his great Spanish namesake; while my sobriquet with him and the younger lads was "the Captain," a title which I believe I had from taking the helm in our boating expeditions; for frequently have we been dispatched with letters after some vessel, which was beating out to seaward in the narrow channel which stretches between "The Rock" and the mouth of the Dee. On the darkest nights, and during a gale of wind, we have hired one of "Daney's gigs," which were swift and powerful boats, carrying two sprit sails and a flying gib; and, six or seven of us tumbling into her, we have pursued the tardy vessel, and contrived, at the imminent risk of being staved to pieces, to get some important letters on board. Two sailors always accompanied us, but I

generally had the tiller, and Diaz sat by my side.

On one of these occasions, I had asked him to lend me some change to give to the sailors, and on his pulling out some loose coin, I saw in his hand a curious-looking gold piece. This he told me was a Spanish doubloon; he was making a collection of his country's coins, and he had procured this at a little curiosity-shop kept by a compatriot of his own. I know not what it was excited me about this piece of money, but straightway I purchased it from the Cid, he assuring me that he could get as many as he pleased at the little shop. The piece was of an ancient coinage, bearing the effigies of Philip V. and his first wife Maria Louisa, with the date 1702, and appeared to be of the very purest bullion; but what chiefly attracted me was that on the smooth gold under Philip's head were scratched, or rather cut my own initials, W. N., and, stranger still, I thought I could make out the word Darragh faintly apparent under the initials. It certainly was not a fancy; the letters were there, scraped rudely, but perfectly traceable, and seemingly done with some sharp strong tool.

The

initials also were not of recent formation, but on the contrary seemed almost as old as the doubloon itself. Now there was a tradition which I had often heard in my boyish days that the old admiral, whose name was Walter likewise, had amassed a treasure, and concealed it at the Darragh. The story was so disreputable to his memory, that my uncle had taken every means to hush it up; for the legend recited that the old tar had actually at one period of his life gone a buccaneering under Dutch colors in the Spanish main, and had captured and appropriated a Mexican trader laden with specie, and that this treasure was hidden somewhere in the the house-underneath the old black chair was the general opinion-and that the admiral's revisiting the glimpses of the moon, and his promenades, noisy and nocturnal, were produced by an anxiety on the part of the ghost concerning this treasure. More than this, my uncle had once showed me some large gold Jacobuses, which had belonged to the Admiral, and which were initialed and scraped precisely as was this Spanish piece.

I enquired from Diaz the name of the shop were he had procured the coin. It was situated in a little alley off Lord-street, and kept by a man calling himself Wall or Walls. I wrote it down in my tablets, intending to call next day, and make enquiries; but in the mean while Diaz had met the tradesman, who could give no account of how this peculiar coin had flowed into the mouth of his sack, and so the matter died away for the time. If I had said, not died away, but that it was overridden by a new object of interest, I should have expressed myself more veraciously, for on gaining my glass case that evening, I saw lying on my desk a letter from Gayston, with mourning edges, and a black seal. The beginning of the letter was dated from my Uncle Silverties' rectory; said uncle "entirely approved of my present independent course; but thought I had been hasty, &c., and that I should not have changed my name." My dear aunt sent me "much love and many blessings." She also had transferred to my name in the County Bank of Salop the sum of one thousand pounds, which she had originally left me in her will, and which she now requested me to keep against a "hard day." This was indeed a noble gift which I accepted with all my heart. Here the letter broke off, and was not resumed for three weeks, when Gayston wrote with a more rapid and freer pen, dating his communication from Gwysaney Park, the seat of his hostile uncle, and the father of his wife. The letter ran thus:

:

My dear Walter,

"I brought my half finished sheet over to this house, on a hasty summons from my uncle himself. You may guess my astonishment, and the measure of joy which followed it, when I found my uncle cognizant of, and prepared to forgive and to sanction all. On his dying bed he blessed poor Mary and me, as man and wife; and to evidence the sincerity of his kindness he added a codicil to his Will, bequeathing me his valuable library, as his son-in-law and nephew -he was very ill when I arrived, but his mind clear and happy, and the dark resentment clouds utterly scattered and gone. My dear little wife knew not what to do, or how to feel between her deep sorrow at losing

one whom she had always truly loved, and her joy at his change of mind, and the great peace which shone upon his countenance. However, she has been crying very heartily, and I think is now disposed to be more calm and resigned. He died the morning after my arrival. My brother Tom and his wife arrived the same day I did, and were received with equal affection. What an unexpected blessing has this been to me, dear Walter. Surely we may reason on it, and by a parity of expectation anticipate something as bright and as beneficial for you, who are, as I was till now, one of dame Fortune's foot-balls. Well but, you may ask, how was all this brought about? By very simple and beautiful machinery, namely, the influence of goodness, of gentleness, and truth, acting on a nature originally honest and kindly, till warped into hardness and obliquity by imaginary wrong, and I do believe also by the irritation of coming disease.

"Now, to begin my story-did you ever hear of the great Mr. Pendarvis, who has represented Cornwall for so many years, and who is as renowned for his ability as a speaker as he is for his honesty as a politician? You ought to know him, Walter, for three reasons; first, he is your remote kinsman; secondly, he is a great admirer of yours; and thirdly, and to conclude, as old Silverties says when preaching, you saved his life, and that of the lovely Rosa Mundi his daughter, on a Snowdon precipice. Now this good man was at Interlacken some three years ago, and living in the same pension as my uncle and his daughters, and a close intimacy had sprung up between the parties; and so, about a month ago, my Mary heard from Miss Pendarvis, asking leave for herself and her father to visit at Gwysaney, to which my uncle gladly assented, and they came on here from Edinburgh, my uncle receiving them on his sofa, on which he was wheeled every evening into the drawing room, that he might enjoy the society of his distinguished guests. Now, you must know, Walter, that the fair Rosa has a delicious voice, and enchants the ear' like Ariel; and my uncle, once no mean performer on the violencello, was in raptures with the warble of this

Cornish nightingale. Be it as it may, the Rosa Mundi obtained an extraordinary influence over him, whether by her beauty, her voice, her gentleness, or her unaffected piety, deponent sayeth not. She talked, and read much to him, and lo, one evening he opened his mind and told herevidently expecting her sympathyhow ill my father had used him in the affair of the lawsuit, &c. My wife was sitting in the window at her work, and he did not perceive her. She said, Miss Pendarvis heard him out with much patience, never interrupting him until he paused, wearied with his own excitement. She then said gently, 'Of course, dear sir, you forgave your brother, and have forgotten all these wrongs.' 'Never-never!' was the sick man's vehement answer. Poor Mary trembled so that her work dropped from her hands; but the Rosa Mundi was made of sterner metal, for firmly and composedly, but with extreme gentle ness, and the Cordelia voice soft and low, an excellent thing in woman, she put before him the wrongfulness of his indulging resentment; nay, she opened his own Bible, and read to him the divine precept of, ‘Love your enemies,' 'Forgive and ye shall be forgiven,' and then referred him to the divine practice of HIM who prayed for his murderers and torturers, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' My wife was amazed at her courage, for Mr. Gayston had been spoiled by his wife, and never could bear one word of any kind of reproof; and she watched this lovely young creature bending over her father's sofa, with such a simple dignity of truth and goodness about her, that she felt assured she would prevail. My uncle offered argument upon argument to excuse his 'just indignation,' as he termed it, but steadfast and calm she abided by her principle, putting the matter before him as a question of right or wrong, as a business between God and his own soul; and asking him plainly was he fit to meet his Judge with such an unrepressed feeling in his heart. Presently she got up, and would have left him, but taking his hand from his eyes, she saw that he had been weeping, as with a broken voice he said, 'Dear young lady, will you not come and see me soon again?'

She smiled most sweetly at him, and glided out of the room like a good spirit. And this was the beginning of our new-born happiness, for before a week had elapsed Mary had told her all, and in the same calm determinateness of spirit, and gentle speech, she made my uncle acquainted with our marriage, first saying to us 'that it never should have been concealed from him, and that God's blessing would not rest on anything clandestine.' She is a noble creature, Walter, high souled yet humble, and difficulties complex and concrete seem to unravel themselves and melt away before her straight and simple walk of Christian principle. Well, we waited with great anxiety for the result, which was far beyond our anticipations. My uncle bore it calmly; said that I had been wrong to marry his child secretly, yet that he had been more wrong to separate us.' He then spoke highly of me, and it ended in poor Mary being called in, and sobbing in his arms for nearly ten minutes-while the other culprit, viz., myself, was sent for, and had a kind pressure of the hand from my poor uncle, who was just teaching me to love him as I lost him, for he died shortly after this, rejoicing and full of peace, and faith in his Redeemer ; and to the last day of his life he would have Miss Pendarvis singing sweet hymns in his ears, which he said calmed his spirit and reminded him of heaven.

"Her father had only remained two days, being summoned by business to town; but he came down to my uncle's funeral, and to bring his daughter away. He and I fraternized at once genially together, and during a walk we had in the garden he told me the whole Romaunt of Snowdon, of the vision of the ascending climber, his care for his dog, and their mutual caresses on the rock-dilating on your figure, voice, good looks, and thorough-bred manners. I shall make you fearfully vain, Walter; but how much more so had you seen how his daughter accompanied by glance, and blush, and sympathy of look every portion of her father's narrative, as he eulogized the Bello Tenebroso-the mysterious, yet interesting young man of the mountainsso proud, and yet so humble-so independent, and yet so gentle--so