him for stories by the hour; his gracious
young lady who had always been so good and
condescending to him! Ralph could not bear
it. With a wailing stifled cry he fell back
against the old oak tree; and, for a long
time, all nature and all grief alike were shut
out from him. But when the faintness
passed, and he was obliged to remember
again, he turned away with a breaking heart
from the blank of his future; feeling that his
life without Miss Letty as its queen and
guiding star, would be a mere desert without
shade or verdure. Even his earwigs and
his emmets lost their charm: chemistry
seemed a mere phantasmagoria of flitting
vapours, without form or object.

He would go away again, he said. His
vacation was over, and he would go back to
Edinburgh. He was of no use here: a queer
fellow like himself was out of place in such
times as weddings. He looked so ill and
worn when he said this, that Mrs. Temple
noticed it, and asked him, breathingly, what
was the matter with him? So did Miss
Letty, even in the midst of all her rose-
coloured excitement and most fervent girlish
love. She went to him, after breakfast, and
pouted in her old way of command, and told
him, for the thousandth time in their joint
lives together, that he was an idiot and an old
baby, and asked what was wrong now?

"Oh, Miss Letty!" began Ralph; but he
could get no farther. He gave a loud sob,
and rushed from the room, down the garden
to that favourite retreat the shrubbery, where
he burrowed in among the trees, and remained
all the day. He was a little consoled by
finding a new red fungus and a variety of
ladybird.

"Can Ralph be jealous?" thought Miss
Letty, with her blue eyes very wide open.

However, Ralph was not allowed to go
away before the wedding. Letty, who, of
course, had no idea of the truth, insisted on
his staying. She should not feel happy; she
should not feel married, she said; unless
Ralph was there. So Ralph smothered his
own feelings and obeyed her, and found a
certain amount of happiness for the time, as
usual, in his obedience. It was something to
suffer at her command! But, when the
wedding-day came, and he had seen her given
away, his pride, his joy, his life, his own soul
—given away to the keeping of a handsome,
foolish, petulant fop—when there was no
longer any joy on earth for him, no longer
any hope, even of the moonlight pleasure of
his life—when, standing in the dusty road to
see her pass, taking off his hat as to a queen,
and letting his long gray hair stream in the
summer breeze as he gazed his last look at
her, lying back in the carriage in all her white
wedding loveliness and glory—when, on her
turning back again and again, leaning out to
see him so long as she could, and waving her
hand and handkerchief to him kindly, she
saw him still standing there, like a statue
without life or motion—and when the
carriage finally disappeared behind the trees—
then Ralph plunged wildly into the woods,
and wandered away from Manor House for
ever. Wandering through the world in
poverty and privation, a gentle, harmless,
half-crazed naturalist, who knew the haunts
and habits of every tiny creature to be found
in England, and who sometimes in his restless
sleep—large tears rolling quietly down his
withered cheeks—murmured plaintively,
"Miss Letty!" and "Lost! lost!"

OUR BEDFORDSHIRE FARMER.*

IT was harvest-time when we went down on
our first visit to the friend whom for anonymous
distinction we will call the Bedfordshire farmer.
We travelled by railroad of course, and
were set down on a platform almost within
sight of his hospitable chimney. In this
roadside station, which is in effect an
inland iron port, to a purely rural district,
we have a specimen of one of the mechanical
revolutions of modern agriculture.
The fat beasts and sheep of this parish
formerly required four days to travel along
the road to market, at a loss of many
pounds of flesh, beside growing feverish
and flabby with excitement and fatigue; they
now reach the same market, calm and fresh, in
four hours. If news of a favourable corn-
market have arrived by the morning's post,
fifty quarters of wheat can be carried from
the stack, thrashed out by steam-driven
machinery, sold, and the money returned in much
less time than it would have taken merely to
thrash out fifty quarters by the hand-flail.

* See Beef, Mutton, and Bread, page 113 of the
tenth volume.

The farmer himself met us on the platform
—a disappointing personage, considering that
he had been more than twenty years getting
a living by growing corn and sheep; for he
had not an atom of the uniform associated
from time immemorial with the British
farmer—no cord-breeches, no top-boots, not
even gaiters, no broad-brimmed hat, not a
large red face or ample corporation—in fact,
was not half so much like the conventional
farmer as my friend and fellow-traveller Nuggets,
of the eminent firm of Nuggets and Bullion,who
cultivates eight and a half acres at Brixton,
on the most scientific principles, at an annual
loss of about twenty pounds an acre. The
Bedfordshire farmer looked and was dressed
very much like any other gentleman not
obliged to wear professional black and white.
His servant, too, who shouldered our carpet
bags, wore neither smock-frock nor
hobnailed shoes; he might have been the groom
of a surgeon or a parson.

The Grange presented what amateurs in
French would call more disillusionment. A
modern villa-cottage, with one ancient gable
and one set of Elizabethan chimneys, planted