be employed are to repair, when they may be
entertained accordingly." Whereupon there
is an offer made to contract with gardeners
and farmers for supplies of compost.
Compost! There goes as much scum to the raising
of produce out of one plot as out of
another. That is the moral we find in the
bottom corner of the paper.

GOLD-HUNTING.

IN TWO PARTS. PART THE FIRST.

Whither away, young man;
Whither away?

To the land where gold doth grow,
There with sack and pack we go,
    Where men revel, smoke, and fight;
Where they swelter in the sun,
Where they sleep, their delving done,
    On bags of gold. Good-night!

ON the tenth of June, eighteen hundred
and fifty-two, a great sorrow had fallen on two
families in the north. These two families
lived in Coquet Dale, on the coast of
Northumberland. Their ancestors had borne
great names in the days of feudal strife. They
were united by many an old tradition, which
had maintained a kindly friendship long after
the martial glories of their race had departed.
They now occupied a still and unobtrusive
position in their native county, and one of
them had descended to the simple rank of a
yeoman. Farmer Widdrington could trace
his descent from the hero who had fought so
stoutly on his stumps after his legs had been
smitten off at Chevy-Chace. He now saw the
once fair estates of his particular branch of
the family reduced to one hundred and fifty
acres on a bare and chilly upland, which,
from the free play of the elements about it,
had acquired for his humble homestead the
significant name of Windy-Haugh. From
this elevated spot, he could look down, at a
distance, on the stately but ruined towers of
Warkworth, from whose portals his ancestors
had often borne proudly the banner of the
Percy against the bands of Douglas. Still
beyond lay the wild ocean, and just below
him lay, snugly embowered in its gardens
and orchards, the imposing antique residence
of Reginald Mowbray, his very good neighbour
and friend.

The two families living thus near to each
other, and somewhat distant from others, the
intercourse between them, based on long
family alliance, had been all the more
uninterrupted, simple, and cordial. Mr. Mowbray,
very much the richer man of the two, was of
a quiet and very retiring disposition, devoted
to the reading of Border antiquities and to
fly-fishing. Since the death of his wife,
some years previously, he had grown
more confirmed in his avoidance of general
society. He had only one child, a daughter,
Ellen Mowbray, on whose education he had
bestowed much care and expense, and she
was now his almost constant companion and
solace.

His great enjoyment, next to ranging the
wild moorlands through which the Coquet
runs from near Carter Fell to the sea, was
and had been for twenty years at least,
daily, when at home, to walk slowly up the
hill to neighbour Widdrington's, with his
newspaper in his pocket, and have a comfortable
chat with the hearty old couple who
lived there. He was accustomed to drop in
at the close of the day, when the farmer's
labours were ended, and they had drawn
round the fire. Here he communicated
any news that the paper contained, and they
discussed the state and prospects of the
country.

Matthew Widdrington—a strong, hale man,
of a clear, hard, practical head, who took
a shrewd, common-sense view of things—was
never in danger of being led away by his
imagination, which betrayed no evidence of
its existence except when awakened by some
tradition of the past, by wild border legends,
such as the Ghostly Bridal of Featherstonhalgh,
or the dirge of a Lykewake, or a story
of a battlefield, so many of which lay around
them in which their forefathers had stood
together. Mrs. Widdrington was one of those
women whose sound sense and warm motherly
hearts make themselves strongly felt where-
ever they exist, even in the humblest
dwellings. The squire had perfect reliance on
her judgment and true feeling; and he never
concluded the least affair of business without
having well discussed it during the evening
conclave at Windy-Haugh. Mrs. Widdrington
had been the intimate, long-years' friend
of his late wife, and showed a mother's interest
in Ellen. There were no days so happy as
when the bright face and merry voice of Ellen
Mowbray enlivened the little farm-house.

The Widdringtons had two sons; the eldest,
Andrew, a sober, plain, young man, whose
ideas never overran the farm on which they
lived, and on which he was an indefatigable
plodder; the younger, George, a quick, ardent,
and impetuous character. He had an especial
passion for anything belonging to country
life, and may be said to owe this, in a great
degree, to Mr. Mowbray. As a lad, he had
often engaged him to carry his fishing-basket
and landing-net on his angling expeditions up
the Coquet; the prince of Northumbrian
piscatory streams. By this means he seemed to
have become indispensable on such
occasions to the old gentleman. His active,
character; his readiness to run on all
occasions, to assist in all difficulties and his
fondness for the sport, had completely
won the old gentleman's heart. Many a
delightful summer's day they spent together
amongst the falls and moors of that picturesque
and singularly solitary region; by Brinkburn
Priory; the quaint, grey, old village of
Rothbury; amongst the heathery Siminside
Hills; by the ruins of Harbottle, and its