"Nay, that is too charming. That really is like an adventure."
"Here, Edgar!"
He was crossing the paddock at some little distance.
"Come here for one instant. Do you recollect what I was talking to you about this very morning? Well, Lettice has met with an adventure, and has stumbled upon an old acquaintance of yours—reading the Bible to an old woman—he was at school with you.
"Well, as there were about five hundred people, more or less, who had that honor—if you mean to know any thing about him, Miss Arnold, you must go a little more into detail; and, first and foremost, what is the young gentleman's name?"
"James St. Leger," said Lettice.
A start for answer, and,
"Ha! Indeed! Poor fellow! he turned up again. I little thought our paths in life would ever cross more. How strange to unearth him in such a remote corner of the world as Briarwood. Poor fellow! Well, what is he like? and how does he look?"
"Ill and melancholy," said Lettice. "I should say very ill and very melancholy—and with reason I believe; for though he is in holy orders, something is the matter with his throat or his chest; which renders him useless in the pulpit."
"You don't say so. His chest! I hope not. And yet," continued Edgar, as if musing aloud, "I know not. He was one when I knew him, Miss Arnold, so marked out through the vices of others for misery in this world, that I used to think the sooner he went out of it the better for him."