A FRIEND of mine, with whom I lately compared churchyard experiences," gave me a little narrative of one which had recently fallen to his share, during an angling excursion in one of our northern counties. It will be best and easiest to let the narrator speak in his own person, so, without further preamble, "I tell the tale as it was told to me."

Arriving about dark one evening at a large village, where I proposed taking up my quarters for the night, I observed a general stir and agitation, as if a bee-hive were pouring forth its swarming colonists; and as I proceeded down the long straggling street, towards the sign of "The Jolly Miller," the whole population of the place seemed streaming in the opposite direction of the churchyard, which I had passed at the entrance of the village. Men, women, and children, were hurrying along, with an appear ance of eager trepidation; and there was a general hum of voices, though every one seemed to speak below his natural key, except a few blustering youngsters, who were whetting their own courage, by boasting of it with valiant oaths and asseverations, and ridiculing the cowardice of the women and children. The latter were running along close by their mothers, holding fast by their gowns or aprons, and every minute pressing nearer, and looking up in their faces, with eyes of fearful inquiry. As the different groups scudded swiftly by me, I caught here and there a few disjointed words about "a ghost," and "the churchyard," and "all in white," and "Old Andrew," and "ten-foot high," and very awful!" Half-tempted was I to turn with the stream, and wind up my day's sport with a Ghost hunt, but the sign of the Jolly Miller waving before me, and the brown loaf, and foaming can, so naturally depicted thereon, were irresistible attractions to a poor Piscator, who had fasted since early morning from all but the delights of angling; and who, as day declined, had followed the windings of the stream for many a weary mile, to seek rest and refreshment at the

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village hostelrie. It was well for me that I arrived not in equestrian equipage, for neither landlord, hostler, nor male biped of any denomination, was visible about the large old house and its adjacent stable-yard. But I needed no attendance; so stooping with my shoulder-load of rod, basket, and landing-net, as I stept down one step into the low heavy old porch, I passed straight on into the kitchen, where a bla zing fire in the huge gaping chimney, gave me a cheerful welcome, though neither there, nor in the adjoining tap-room, could I espy signs or tokens of any living creature. I could have been well contented to take silent possession of one of the high-backed settles within the ingle-nook, had there been wherewithal within reach to appease "the rage of hunger," whose importunate calls were rather incited than suppressed by the feeling of warmth and comfort which circulated through my whole frame, as I stood beside the companionable hearth. So I called lustily, and thumped the end of my fishing-rod against the heavy oaktable and dark wooden partition, till at last came hurrying forth from an inner-chamber, a little old woman, whose sharp shrivelled face betokened no mood of sweet complacency. But a few words, intimating my intentions of sojourning in her house that night, and my voracious designs upon her larder and ale-butt, smoothed, as if by magic, half the wrinkles in her face, and put her in such good-humour, with me at least, that she would fain have installed me into the chilling magnificence of the parlour, whose sanded and boarded floor, and dismal fireless grate, nodding with plumes of fennel, like the Enchanted Helmet in the Castle of Otranto, I was obliged to glance at, though the first glimpse sent me back with shivering eagerness to the comforts of the kitchen-hearth, where at last I was permitted to settle myself, while mine hostess spread for me a little claw-table,with a snowwhite cloth, and set about preparing my savoury supper of fried eggs and rashers.

It was not till I had dispatched two

courses of those, with a proportionate quantum of" jolly good ale and old," that I found leisure, while attacking the picturesque ruins of a fine old Cheshire cheese, to question mine ancient hostess respecting those signs of popular agitation which had excited my curiosity as I came through the village. My inquiry set wide open the floodgates of her eloquence and indignation. "Well I might ask," she said, “but, for her part, she was almost ashamed to tell me what fools the folks made of themselves,-her master among 'em,-who was old enough to know better, Lord help him! than to set off, night after night, galloping after a ghost,-with Bob Ostler at his heels, and that idle hussy Beckey, leaving her to mind the house, and look to everything, and be robbed and murdered for what they knew, and all for what quotha? She wished, when their time came, they might lie half as quiet in their graves as old Andrew did in his, for all their nonsensical crazy talk about his walking o' nights." I waited patiently till the 'larum had unwound itself, then taking up that part of the desultory invective which more immediately related to the haunted churchyard, and its unquiet tenant, I got the old lady fairly into the mood of story-telling; and from what she then related to me, and from after gleanings among other inhabitants of the village, succeeded in stringing together a tolerably connected narrative.

Andrew Cleave, whose remains had been interred the preceding week in Redburn Churchyard, was the oldest man in its large and populous parish, and had been one of the most prosperous among its numerous class of thriving and industrious husbandmen. His little property, which had descended from father to son for many generations, consisted of a large and comfortable cottage, situated on the remote verge of the village common, a productive garden, and a few fields, which he cultivated so successfully, rising up early, and late taking rest, that by the time he had attained the middle period of life, he was enabled to rent a score more acres-had got together a pretty stock of cattle-had built a barn-and enclosed a rickyard-and drove as fine a team as any in the parish-was altogether accounted a man "well to do in the world,"

and was generally addressed by the style and title of " Farmer Cleave." Then-and not till then,-and still with most phlegmatic deliberation, he began to look about him for a partner a help meet-in the true homely sense of the word, was the wife he desired to take unto himself; and it was all in vain-"Love's Labour Lost"-that many a wealthy farmer's flaunting daughter-and many a gay damsel of the second table, from my lord's, and the squire's,-and divers other fair ones set their caps at wary Andrew, and spake sweet words to him when chance threw them in his path, and looked sweet looks at him, when he sat within eyeshot at church, in his own old oaken pew, hard by the clerk's desk, with his tall, bony, athletic person, erect as a poker, and his coal-black hair (glossy as the raven's wing) combed smooth down over his forehead, till it met the intersecting line of two straight jetty eyebrows, almost meeting over the high curved nose, and overhanging a pair of eyes, dark, keen, and lustrous; but withal, of a severe and saturnine expression, well in keeping with that of the closely compressed lips, and angular jaw. Those lips were not made to utter tender nonsense -nor those eyes for ogling, verily ; but the latter were sharp and discerning enough, to find out such qualifications as he had laid down to himself, as indispensable in his destined spouse, among which (though Andrew Cleaves was justly accounted a close, penurious man) money was not a paramount consideration, as he wisely argued within himself, a prudent wife might save him a fortune, though she did not bring one. A small matter by way of portion, could not come amiss, however, and Andrew naturally weighed in with her other perfections the twenty years' savings of the vicar's housekeeper, whose age did not greatly exceed his own-who was acknowledged to be the best housewife in the parish, and the most skilful dairy-woman, having come from a famous cheese country, whose fashions she had successfully introduced at Redburn Vicarage. Beside which, Mrs Dinah was a staid, quiet person-not given to gadding and gossiping and idle conversation; and, "moreover," quoth Andrew, "I have a respect unto the damsel, and, verily, I might go farther and fare worse.' "Marry in

made for any other purpose than to circulate the blood, if the birth of a son, in the second year of his union, had not opened up in his bosom such a fountain of love and tenderness, as gushed out, like water from the flinty rock; and became thenceforth the master passion, the humanizing feeling of his stern and powerful character. The mother's fondness, and she was a fond mother, was nothing, compared with that with which the father doated on his babe; and he would rock its cradle, or hush it in his arms, or sing to it by the hour, though the lullaby seldom varied from the 100th psalm, and, as he danced it to the same exhilarating tune, it was a wonder that the little Josiah clapped his hands, and crowed with antic mirth, instead of comporting himself with the solemnity of a parish clerk in swaddling clothes.

It was strange and pleasant to observe, how the new and holy feeling of parental love penetrated, like a fertilizing dew, the hitherto hard, insensible nature of Andrew Cleave; how it extended its sweet influence beyond the exciting object the infant darling to his fellow creatures in ge neral, disposing his heart to kindliness and pity, and almost to sociability. In the latter virtue, he made so great progress as to invite a few neighbours to the christening feast, charging his dame to treat them handsomely to the best of everything, and he himself, for the first time in his life, " on hospitable thoughts intent,' pressed and smiled, and played the courteous host to a miracle.

And sometimes, on his way home of an evening, he would stop and exchange a few words with an acquaintance, at his cottage door, attracted by the sight of some chubby boy, with whose short limbs and infant vigour he would compare, in his mind's eye, the healthful beauty of his own urchin. But great, indeed, was the amazement of Dame Cleave, when Andrew, who had always "set his face like a flint" against the whole tribe of idle mendicants, making it a rule, not only to chase them from his own door, but to consign them, if possible, to the wholesome coercion of the parish stocks, actually went the length of bestowing a comfortable meal, a night's shelter in an outhouse, and a bed of clean straw, on a soldier's widow, who was

travelling, with her babe in her arms, towards the far distant home of its dead father.

Dame Cleave stared in strange perplexity, and said something about "charity beginning at home," and coming to want," and "harbouring idle husseys and their brats." But Andrew was peremptory, for his eye had glanced from the poor soldier's fatherless babe to the cherished creature at that time nestling in his own bosom. So the widow was 66 warmed and fed," and left a blessing on her benefactor, who, on his part, failed not to accompany his parting "God speed you," and the small piece of money which accompanied it, with an impressive lecture on the sinfulness of want and pauperism, and a comfortable assurance, that they were always deserved manifestations of divine displeasure.

Just as the little Josiah had attained his second year, Andrew Cleave was called on to resign the wife of his bosom, who went the way of all flesh, after a short but sharp illness. She had so fully realized all the calculations that had decided Andrew to choose her for his mate, that he regretted her loss very sincerely; but resignation, he justly observed, was the duty of a Christian, and Andrew was wonder, fully resigned and composed, even in the early days of his bereavement, throwing out many edifying comments on the folly and sinfulness of immoderate grief, together with sundry apposite remarks, well befitting his own circumstances, and a few proverbial illustrations and observations, such as, "misfortunes never come alone, for his poor dame was taken at night, and the old gander was found dead in the morning." Moreover, he failed not to sum up, as sources of rational consolation," that it had pleased the Lord to spare her till the boy ran alone, and Daisey's calf was weaned, and all the bacon cured; and he himself had become fully competent to supply her place in the manufacturing of cheeses." So Andrew buried his wife, and was comforted.

And, from the night of her death, he took his little son to his own bed, and laid him in his mother's place; and long and fervent were the prayers he ejaculated before he went to rest, kneeling beside his sleeping child; and cautious and tender as a mother's kiss,

was that he imprinted on its innocent brow before he turned himself to slumber. Early in the morning_an elderly widow, who had been used to cook his victuals, and set the cottage to rights before his marriage, came to take up and tend the boy, and get breakfast for him and his father, and she was now detained through the day, in the care of household concerns, and of the motherless little one. She was a good and tender foster-mother, and a careful manager withal, falling readily into Andrew's ways and likings; a woman of few words, and content with little more than her victuals and drink—and (inoffensive and taciturn as she was) he had a feeling of snug satisfaction in locking her out every evening when she betook her self to sleep at her own cottage. Then was Andrew wont to turn back to his own solitary hearth, with a feeling of self gratulation, not evincing much taste for social enjoyment, or any disposition again to barter his secure state of single blessedness for a chance in the matrimonial lottery. which, having drawn a first-rate prize, it would have been presumptuous to expect a second.

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What with old Jenny's help, and his own notability, (he had not lived so long a bachelor without having acquired some skill in housewifery), he got on very comfortably; and for a living object to care for, and to love, the little Josiah was to him wife, child, companion-every thing! So Andrew continued faithful as a widowed turtle to the memory of his deceased Dinah; and the motherless boy throve as lustily as if he had continued to nestle under the maternal wing. He was, in truth, a fine sturdy little fellow, full of life and glee, and quips and cranks, and mirthful smiles," and yet as like Andrew as two peas. "The very moral of the father," said old Jenny, only not so solemn like." He had Andrew's jetty eyebrows, and black lustrous eyes, deep set under the broad projecting brow; but they looked out with roguish mirth from their shadowy cells, and the raven hair, that, like his father's, almost touched his straight eyebrows, clung clustering over them, and round his little fat poll, in a luxuriance of rich, close, glossy curls. His mouth was shaped like his father's, too; but Andrew's could never, even

in childhood, have relaxed into suen an expression of dimpled mirth, as the joyous laugh burst out-that sound of infectious gladness, which rings to one's heart's core like a peal of merry bells. He was a fine little fellow! and, at five years old, the joy and pride of the doating father, not only for his vigorous beauty, but for his quick parts, and wonderful forwardness in learning; for Andrew was a scholar, and had early taken in hand his son's education; so that, at the age above mentioned, he could spell out passages in any printed book, could say the Lord's Prayer and the Belief, and great part of the Ten Commandments, though he stuck fast at the 39 Articles, and the Athanasian Creed, which his father had thought it expedient to include among his theological studies. It was the proudest day of Andrew Cleave's whole life, when, for the first time, he led his little son by the hand up the aisle of his parish church, into his own pew, and lifted up the boy upon the seat beside him, where (so well had he been tutored, and so profound was his childish awe,) he stood stock still, with his new red prayer-book held open in his two little chubby hands, and his eyes immoveably fixed, " not on the book, but" on his father's face. All eyes were fixed upon the boy, for, verily, a comical little figure did the young Josiah exhibit that Sabbath-day. Andrew Cleave had a sovereign contempt for petticoats, (though, of course, he had never hinted as much in his late spouse's hearing,) and could ill brook that his son and heir, a future lord of creation, should be ignominiously trammelled even in swaddling clothes. So soon, therefore, as a change was feasible-far sooner than old Jenny allowed it to be so-the boy was emancipated from his effeminate habiliments, and made a man of a little man complete, in coat, waistcoat, and breeches, made after the precise fashion of his father's, who had set the tailor to work in his own kitchen, under his own eye, and on a half-worn suit of his own clothes, out of which enough remained in excellent preservation, to furnish a complete equipment for the man in miniature. So little Josiah's Sunday-going suit consisted of a long-tailed coat of dark blue broad cloth, lapelled back with two rows of large gilt basket-work buttons; a