"Shall it be Thursday?" inquired Mr. Bulkley, looking over to me.

I intimated that all days were alike to me, and that Thursday suited me perfectly well. So the dinner was fixed for Thursday.

"I wish to have you come this week," said the colonel, rising to depart, "because I shall have to go to Boston next week, and may not be able to return until the very end of it, or the beginning of the week after. On Thursday, then, I shall expect you."

And he was taking his leave, when the parson and I thought that we would walk with him, the night being extremely fine, as far as the bridge. Our society was gladly accepted, and we walked merrily along the road, accompanied by many a story and jest, and followed by many a laugh. No doubt as we passed by the scattered houses of the village, people said, "That's priest Bulkely's voice! I should know it among a thousand. I wonder if any body's been took sick! It can't be, though, or he wouldn't laugh so."

At the bridge we parted, the colonel pursuing his way by the river-road, and the parson and I going back over our steps.

"It was so like him!" said Mr. Bulkley, as soon as we were fairly out of hearing.

"What do you mean, sir?" I asked, "what was so like him?"

"His coming so instantly to invite you," said he. "He never hangs fire-the colonel. He always goes off at halfcock."

"Well, sir," I replied, "provided he hits as well as he has to-night, it's not a bad way of going off."

"Not at all, not at all," he returned, “a short aim is generally the best. But he's a queer man, sir, as Jasper told you. An odd compound of openness and reserve. He seems so transparent that you would think you could see straight through him at a glance. But you will find yourself mistaken. You may look your eyes blind without really making him out.”

"Do you suppose, sir," I asked, "that he has any thing really to conceal, or that he does not choose to make talk of his private affairs, merely because they are private ?"

I can't tell," he replied. "I can only say that intimate as I have been with him, and the only person he really associates with for the greatest part of his time, he has never let a word drop as to any of them; not even as to his motive for coming to this country, or the probable length of his stay. It must be systematic to be so uniform."

"Is he as close as to his life in Europe?" I asked.

"Very nearly," he replied; "that is, as to the more recent part of it. He talks fast enough about old times, and very well, too. However, it's none of my business, and I suppose he is of the same opinion. But you will find him a charming companion, as well as Miss Eleanor, and I am glad you have got admission to the house."

"Is she as sly as her father?" I inquired. "She does not seem to have so much to say, at any rate, judging by the little I saw of her."

"I hardly see enough of her to judge," he answered. And, besides, I am afraid I am hardly the confidant she would be likely to choose, if she had any thing to tell. But it would not have been strange if her father had sometimes, by chance, let fall to me something of his history or plans that might not be proclaimed in Grimes's bar-room. But no such chance has ever happened. You know as much of them as I do, and what I have told you I obtained from other sources than themselves."

We were now at home, and I bid him good night, smiling a little, privily, at the good man's curiosity (of which he did not seem at all suspicious) to know of his neighbor's affairs; which, however, I am given to understand, was no idiosyncrasy of his particular constitution, nor even one confined to small rural parishes, like Wensley. There was a shade, however, of wounded feeling in his expression, as if he had not received quite a just return for the fulness of confidence he was ready to pour into the bosom of his friend, at which I had no disposition to smile. But is there any of us that has not some Bluebeard's chamber in his heart, which he keeps close shut even to his nearest and dearest? I do not pretend to any personal knowledge myself; but, from what I have seen and heard, I surmise that there are married men even who would be ready to play Bluebeard in good earnest, if they should find that the very wives of their bosoms had found a cranny through which to peer into those prohibited recesses. wonder what they would see there! And Mr. Bulkley himself, would he have exposed to the eye of his dearest friend the sacred, though dishonored, image of his fatal Julia, and the troop of recollections, emotions, and agonies that waited upon it? I think not, even to have the veil lifted from the most secret places of any other life.

I

Thursday arrived, as it usually does, as nearly in the middle of the week as possible. And, moreover, it was a very fine

day, so that Mr. Bulkley and I chose to go to Woodside on foot rather than disturb the bones of old Whiteface, the minister's horse, from their repose in the stable. Jasper had brushed up his master's buckles, and made him as smart as his best coat and breeches (it would be hardly historically correct to call them his new ones), could make him; and, as he was a vigorous walker, we were soon at the hospitable door, which stood open to welcome us. On the threshold stood the master of the house, ready to give us a most cordial reception, and to usher us into the presence of his daughter. She looked handsomer than ever, and as she sat in the window, which she had had cut down to the ground (an astonishment to all Wensley!) opening into her flowergarden, in the light of that lovely day, she did look as lovely as the day itself. The dinner was excellent, such as wealthy gentlemen of that day used to set before their guests. The table furniture was handsome but plain, and all display of wealth was evidently repressed. The table linen was of the finest of damask, and the service of Nankin china. The silver forks were the first that had penetrated to Wensley, and were a marvel and a mystery to its oldest inhabitants, who had never heard of the like. At that time this luxury, which has now become almost a necessity, was confined, even in the cities, to the very rich-and, indeed, not always in daily use with them. So that it is no wonder that their advent caused a sensation in Wensley, nor that Jonathan Snell, the colonel's coachman, should have condescended, one day, to take a specimen in his pocket to show to the astonished inhabitants, at their special instance, after custom had bred familiarity with that great man. But Mr. Bulkley would never give in to this new-fanglement, as he called it. So he was always supplied with a good old-fashioned three-pronged steel fork, with which-" savitque tridenti”he did manful execution.

Mr. Bulkley, of course, took Miss Allerton in to dinner, which ceremony he performed by bearing her hand aloft, with an old-world grace, like a septuagenarian Str Charles Grandison. He would have scorned the custom, had he been cognizant of it, of clapping a lady's hand under his arm, like a brown paper parcel from the grocer's. The colonel and I followed after them, and though he made no sign of remarking the good man's gallantry, he could not control a little twitching of the muscles about the corners of the mouth. During dinner I had but little to say to Miss Allerton, beyond taking wine with her, and assisting her in the dispen

sation of the side dishes at her end of the table. With two elders at table, who talked so much and so well as her father and Mr. Bulkley, there was little occasion or opportunity for us to display any conversational gifts we might possess, except that greatest one of listening well,-that "grand talent pour le silence," which Talleyrand (or whoever it was) showed more wit than sense in laughing at. What would he have done, I should like to know, if there were not some people willing to hold their tongues?

It was entertainment enough to sit and hear the two men talk, and to look at the lovely mistress of the house. Colonel Allerton had seen all the public and literary men of the end of the last century, and the beginning of this; and had known many of them, personally. It was something to hear a man talk who had seen Garrick during his last season, and had had the vision of Dr. Johnson rolling along Fleet-street, though he had never met him face to face as an acquaintance. He had breakfasted in company with Gibbon, and had dined at the same table with Sheridan; and of all the orators, and authors, and beauties of that period, he had had opportunities of personal observation, and could make report of them from what his own eyes had seen. Whatever secret reserve he might have to his best friends, of which Mr. Bulkley had complained, there was no sign of it in his conversation. Nothing could be more free and flowing than his stream of talk. It seemed as if you had only to give it a direction, and it would waft directly to your feet all the facts of his experience. But he was not in the least an overpowering talker. He did not compel you, as Carlyle says Coleridge did, “to sit as a passive bucket, and be pumped into, whether you consent or not;" which, he goes on to say, justly, 66 can in the long run be exhilarating to no creature." On the contrary, he carefully drew out Mr. Bulkley, and made him appear to his best advantage, and was very far from neglecting me.

Mr. Bulkley, indeed, was not a man to be easily put down. Just to others, he was just also to himself, and it would have been a clever man that could rob him of his fair share of what talk was going on. But nobody who had ever heard him talk (your oppressive talkers never hear any body but themselves), would ever wish that he should talk any less. Though he had lived in retirement so long, still his seven years' apprenticeship to the world, during the war, had made him a master of that craft, and had furnished him with inexhaustible stores of personal recollections, all connected

with the most interesting times and people. Then the very quaintness of manner and speech which his solitary life had bred, set off by his extensive, though odd reading, gave a rare raciness to his talk. His intimate acquaintance, too, with the peculiarities of character, and dialect of the country people, whom he had made his study for so long, and his uncommon powers of mimicry, which he would exert in safe societies, made him, I think, the most entertaining companion I ever met in the course of a pretty long acquaintance with the world.

66

The choir sung very well, last Sunday, parson," said Colonel Allerton, with the slightest possible glance at his daughter and me. But if there were any irony in the tone, the parson did not notice it.

"Yes, I think they improve," he said; "I'm sure I take pains enough with them."

"Do you know," returned the colonel, "that I was rather disappointed on coming here, at finding the noses of good old Sternhold and Hopkins put out of joint by Dr. Watts? I was in hopes of hearing once more sung, line by line, by the whole congregation, as of old, "The Lord will come, and he will not ;" and then, as a distinct proposition, puzzling to my infancy-" Keep silence, but speak out!”

"If you had come only five years sooner, you would have had your wish," replied Mr. Bulkley; "I believe Wensley was the last town that yielded to the innovation. I withstood it as long as I could, but the Association* would give me no rest till I fell in with it. But I found it hard work, I assure you."

"What, were the people unwilling to make the change?" exclaimed the colonel; "I respect them for it."

"Loth enough, at first," responded the parson; "most of the old women actually believed that those were the very strains which King David sang to his harp, and looked on the change proposed as little short of blasphemy."

"And how did you manage it?" asked Miss Allerton.

"Why, to tell you the truth, my dear young lady," returned the minister, "I found the young people my best allies. The allurement of a singing-school for the winter nights, and the glories of the singing-gallery on the Sabbath, were more than they could resist; so, by playing off the vanities of the young against the prejudices of the old, I gradually brought all

round, except Deacon Holt. The deacon maintained the faith long after all the rest had given in."

"And how did you overcome him?" inquired the colonel.

'I'll tell you,” pursued the parson. “I knew that he was as self-willed as one of his own bullocks, and so I left him until the very last of the opponents had submitted. Then, supposing he must have been somewhat mollified by the change of opinion in the parish, I moved up to the attack myself. I found the deacon sitting at his front door one fine Sabbath evening about sundown, and soon entered on the subject. 'Deacon,' said I, ‘I am surprised to find that a man of your piety and discretion should oppose the substitution of Watts' for the Old Version,' and then proceeded to give the reasons in favor of the one over the other. He shook his head, Parson Bulkley,' said he, 'I'll tell you what. I've two good reasons why I won't never agree to it.' 'May I ask,' said I, 'what they are?'' My first objection is,' said he, that Watts isn't an expired man.' 'Watts not an expired man!' I exclaimed; 'my dear sir, I am astonished to hear a man of your intelligence say such a thing! I do assure you that there is nothing more certain than that he is an expired man.' 'Be you sartain?' the astonished deacon asked, somewhat shaken by my confidence. 'I am not more certain of my own existence,' I replied; it is a perfectly well established fact.' Well,' said he, slowly, 'if you be sartain sure, I s'pose I must give up that pint."

We all laughed merrily at this, and the colonel said, "And what was the other point, parson?"

"That's just what I asked the deacon,' he replied, "and the deacon said, 'My second pint is, that there's a word in it that isn't in Scriptur.' 'Indeed!' said I, 'that is vital. Pray, what is the word ?? 'PAUSE!' said the deacon; 'there's the word pause in it, and it ain't nowhere in the Bible!' and he looked triumphantly at me, as if he had cornered me now. 'My good friend,' I replied, 'I am more astonished at this objection than at the other. Pause not in the Bible! Please just reach it to me. Look here, now: 1 Samuel, 17: 37, "The Lord hath delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear." paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, taken together, make paws," don't

The