My father's residence was not situated in the village where I was educated; so that, when I left school, I left its scenes also.

After several years had passed away, accident took me again to the well-known place. The stable, into which I led my horse, was dear to me; for I had often listened to the echo that danced within it, when the bells were ringing. The face of the landlord was strange; but I could not forget the in-kneed, red-whiskered hostler*: he had given me a hearty thrashing as a return for a hearty jest.

I had reserved a broad piece of silver for the old widow. But I first ran towards the river, and walked upon the millbank. I was surprised at the apparent narrowness of the stream; and, although the willows still fringed the margin, and appeared to stoop in homage to the water lilies, yet they were diminutive! Every thing was but a miniature of the picture within my mind. It proved to me that my faculties had grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength.

With something like disappointment, I left the river side, and strolled towards the church. My hand was in my pocket, grasping the broad piece of silver. I imagined to myself the kind look of recognition I should receive; I determined on the way in which I should press the money into the widow's hand. But I felt my nerves lightly tremble as I thought upon the look her son had given, and again might give me.

Ah, there is the cottage! but the honey-suckle is older, and it has lost many of its branches!

The door was closed. A pet lamb was fastened to a loose cord under the window; and its melancholy bleating was the only sound that disturbed the silence. In former years, I used, at once, to pull the string which assisted the wooden latch; but now, I deliberately knocked. A strange female form, with a child in her arms, opened the door. I asked for my old acquaintance. "Alas! poor Alice is in her coffin look, sir, where the shadow of the spire ends: that is her grave." I relaxed my grasp of my money. "And her deformed boy?" "He too, sir, is there!" I drew my hand from my pocket.

so.

It was a hard task for me to thank the woman; but I did I moved to the place where the mother and the child were buried. I stood for some minutes, in silence, beside the mound of grass. I thought of the consumptive lad

Prom, os/ler.

and, as I did so, the lamb at the cottage window gave its anxious bleat. And then all the affectionate attentions of my own mother arose on my soul; while my lips trembled out "Mother! dear mother! would that I were as is the widow's son! would that I were sleeping in thy grave! 1 loved thee, mother! but I would not have thee living now, to view the worldly sorrows of thy ungrateful boy! My first step towards vice was the oath which the deformed child heard me utter.

"I have often wished my means were equal to my heart. Circumstances, alone, have unmade me.-And you, who rest here as quietly as you lived, shall receive the homage of the unworthy. I will protect this hillock from the steps of the heedless wanderer, and from the trampling of the village herd. I will raise up a tabernacle to purity and love. I will do it in secret; and I look not to be rewarded openly."

LESSON XXXVIII.

The Little Man in Black.-W. IRVING.

THE following story has been handed down by family tradition for more than a century. It is one on which my cousin Christopher dwells, with more than his usual prolixity; and I have thought it worthy of being laid before my readers.

Soon after my grandfather, Mr. Lemuel Cockloft, had quietly settled himself at the Hall, and just about the time that the gossips of the neighbourhood, tired of prying into his affairs, were anxious for some new tea-table topic, the busy community of our little village was thrown into a grand turmoil of curiosity and conjecture,—a situation very common to little gossiping villages, by the sudden and unaccountable appearance of a mysterious individual.

The object of this solicitude was a little, black-looking man, of a foreign aspect, who took possession of an old building, which, having long had the reputation of being haunted,* was in a state of ruinous desolation, and an object of fear to all true believers in ghosts.

He usually wore a high sugar-loaf hat, with a narrow Haunt, pronounced to rhyme with aunt, not with want.

*

brim, and a little black cloak, which, short as he was, scarcely reached below his knees. He sought no intimacy or acquaintance with any one; appeared to take no interest in the pleasures or the little broils of the village: nor ever talked, except sometimes to himself in an outlandish tongue.

He commonly carried a large book, covered with sheepskin, under his arm; appeared always to be lost in meditation; and was often met by the peasantry, sometimes watching the dawn of day, sometimes, at noon, seated under a tree, poring over his volume, and sometimes, at evening, gazing, with a look of sober tranquillity, at the sun, as it gradually sunk below the horizon.

The good people of the vicinity beheld something prodigiously singular in all this. A profound mystery seemed to hang about the stranger, which, with all their sagacity, they could not penetrate; and, in the excess of worldly charity, they pronounced it a sure sign "that he was no better than he should be:"-a phrase innocent enough in itself, but which, as applied in common, signifies nearly every thing that is bad.

The young people thought him a gloomy mis'anthrope, because he never joined in their sports the old men thought still more hardly of him, because he followed no trade, nor ever seemed ambitious of earning a farthing :— and, as to the old gossips, baffled by the inflexible taciturnity of the stranger, they unanimously decreed, that a man, who could not, or would not talk, was no better than a dumb beast.

The little man in black, careless of their opinions, seemed resolved to maintain the liberty of keeping his own secret; and the consequence was, that, in a little while, the whole village was in an uproar: for, in little communities of this description, the members have always the privilege of being thoroughly versed, and even of meddling, in all the affairs of each other.

A confidential conference was held, one Sunday morning, after sermon, at the door of the village church, and the character of the unknown fully investigated. The schoolmaster gave, as his opinion, that he was the wandering Jew-the sexton was certain that he must be a free-mason, from his silence ::—a third maintained, with great obstinacy, that he was a High German doctor, and that the book, which he carried about with him, contained the secrets of the black art:-but the most prevailing opinion seemed to be,

that he was a witch,-a race of beings at that time abounding in those parts, and a sagacious old matron proposed to ascertain the fact, by sousing him into a kettle of hot water.

Suspicion, when once afloat, goes with wind and tide, and soon becomes certainty. Many a stormy night was the little man in black seen, by the flashes of lightning, frisking and curvet'ing in the air upon a broomstick; and it was always observable that, at those times, the storm did more mischief than at any other. The old lady, in particular, who suggested the humane ordeal of the boiling kettle, lost, on one of these occasions, a fine brindle cow; which accident was entirely ascribed to the vengeance of the little man in black.

If ever a mischievous hireling rode his master's favourite horse to a distant frolic, and the animal was observed to be lame and jaded in the morning, the little man in black was sure to be at the bottom of the affair: nor could a high wind howl through the village at night, but the old women shrugged up their shoulders, and observed, that the little man in black was in his tantrums.

In short, he became the bugbear of every house; and was as effectual in frightening little children into obedience and hysterics as the redoubtable Raw-head-and-bloody-bones himself; nor could a house-wife* of the village sleep in peace, except under the guardianship of a horse-shoe nailed to the door.

The object of these direful suspicions remained, for some time, totally ignorant of the wonderful quandary he had occasioned but he was soon doomed to feel its effects. An individual, who is once so unfortunate as to incur the odium of a village, is, in a great measure, outlawed and proscribed, and becomes a mark for injury and insult; particularly if he has not the power, or the disposition, to recriminate. The little venomous passions, which, in the great world, are dissipated and weakened by being widely diffused, act, in the narrow limits of a country town, with collected vigour, and become rancorous, in proportion as they are confined in their sphere of action.

The little man in black experienced the truth of this, Every mischievous urchin, returning from school, had full liberty to break his windows: and this was considered as a most daring exploit'; for, in such awe did they stand of him, that the most adventurous school-boy was never seen to

* Pron. huz'-wiff.

approach his threshold; and, at night, would prefer going round by the by-roads, where a traveller had been murdered by the Indians, rather than pass by the door of his forlorn habitation.

The only living creature, that seemed to have any care or affection for this deserted being, was an old turnspit,—the companion of his lonely mansion, and his solitary wanderings, the sharer of his scanty meal, and,-sorry am I to say it, the sharer of his persecutions. The turnspit, like his master, was peaceable and inoffensive,-never known to bark at a horse, to growl at a traveller, or to quarrel with the dogs of the neighbourhood.

He followed close at his master's heels, when he went out, and, when he returned, stretched himself in the sunbeams, at the door; demeaning himself, in all things, like a eivil and well disposed turnspit. But, notwithstanding his ex'emplary deportment, he fell, likewise, under the ill report of the village, as being the familiar* of the little man in black, and the evil spirit that presided at his incantations. The old hovel was considered as the scene of their unhallowed rites, and its harmless tenants regarded with a detestation which their inoffensive conduct never merited.

Though pelted and jeered at by the brats of the village and frequently abused by their parents, the little man in black never turned to rebuke them; and his faithful dog, when wantonly assaulted, looked up wistfully in his master's face, and there learned a lesson of patience and forbearance.

LESSON XXXIX.

The same, concluded.

THE movements of this inscrutable being had long been the subject of speculation at Cockloft Hall; for its inmates were full as much given to wondering as their descendants. The patience with which he bore his persecutions, particularly surprised them; for patience is a virtue but little known in the Cockloft family.

My grandmother, who, it appears, was rather superstitious, saw in this humility nothing but the gloomy sullenness of a wizard, who restrained himself for the present, in hopes of

* A demon, supposed to attend at call:-Johnson. Pron. det-tes-ta'-shun.