detected three more conspirators advancing
along the footpath. The leader of this
treasonable party was an elderly gentleman, with
a weather-beaten face and a bluff hearty
manner, admirably calculated to disarm
suspicion. His two followers were a young
gentleman and a young lady, walking arm-in-
arm, and talking together in whispers. They
were dressed in the plainest morning
costume. The faces of both were rather pale,
and the manner of the lady was a little
flurried. Otherwise, there was nothing
remarkable to observe in them, until they came
to the wicket-gate leading into the church-
yard; and there the conduct of the young
gentleman seemed, at first sight, rather
inexplicable. Instead of holding the gate open
for the lady to pass through, he hung back,
allowed her to open it for herself, waited till
she had got to the churchyard side, and then,
stretching out his hand over the gate, allowed
her to lead him through the entrance, as if
he had suddenly changed from a grown man
to a helpless little child.

Noting this,and remarking also that, when
the party from the fields had arrived within
greeting distance of the vicar, and when the
clerk had used his bunch of keys to open the
church-door, the young lady's companion was
led into the building (this time by Doctor
Chennery's hand), as he had been previously
led through the wicket-gate, our observant
stranger must have arrived at one inevitable
conclusion—that the person requiring such
assistance as this, was suffering under the
affliction of blindness. Startled a little by
that discovery, he would have been still
further amazed, if he had looked into the
church, by seeing the blind man and the
young lady standing together before the altar
rails, with the elderly gentleman in parental
attendance. Any suspicions he might now
entertain that the bond which united the
conspirators at that early hour of the morning
was of the hymeneal sort, and that the
object of their plot was to celebrate a
wedding with the strictest secresy, would have
been confirmed in five minutes by the
appearance of Doctor Chennery from the vestry
in full canonicals, and by the reading of the
marriage service in the reverend gentleman's
most harmonious officiating tones. The
ceremony concluded, the attendant stranger must
have been more perplexed than ever by
observing that the persons concerned in it
all separated, the moment the signing, kissing,
and congratulating duties proper to the
occasion had been performed, and quickly
retired in the various directions by which
they had approached the church. Leaving
the clerk to return by the village road, the
bride, bridegroom, and elderly gentleman to
turn back by the footpath over the fields, and
the visionary stranger of these pages to
vanish out of them, a prey to baffled
curiosity, in any direction that he pleases;—let
us follow Doctor Chennery to the vicarage
breakfast-table, and hear what he has to say
about his professional exertions of the morning,
in the familiar atmosphere of his own
family circle.

The persons assembled at the breakfast
were, first, Mr. Phippen, a guest; secondly,
Miss Sturch, a governess; thirdly, fourthly,
and fifthly, Miss Louisa Chennery (aged ten
years), Miss Amelia Chennery (aged nine
years), and Master Robert Chennery (aged
eight years). There was no mother's face
present, to make the household picture
complete. Doctor Chennery had been a widower
since the birth of his youngest child.

The guest was an old college acquaintance
of the vicar's, and he was supposed to be
now staying at Long Beckley for the benefit
of his health. Most men of any character at
all, contrive to get a reputation of some sort
which individualises them in the social circle
amid which they move. Mr. Phippen was a
man of some little character, and he lived
with great distinction in the estimation of his
friends, on the reputation of being A Martyr
to Dyspepsia. Wherever Mr. Phippen went,
the woes of Mr. Phippen's stomach went
with him. He dieted himself publicly, and
physicked himself publicly. He was so
intensely occupied with himself and his
maladies, that he would let a chance acquaintance
into the secret of the condition of his
tongue, at five minutes' notice; being just as
perpetually ready to discuss the state of his
digestion as people in general are to discuss
the state of the weather. On this favourite
subject, as on all others, he spoke with a
wheedling gentleness of manner, sometimes
in softly mournful, sometimes in languidly
sentimental tones. His politeness was of the
oppressively affectionate sort, and he used
the word " dear " continually, in addressing
himself to others. Personally, he could not
be called a handsome man. His eyes were
watery, large, and light grey; they were
always rolling from side to side in a state of
moist admiration of something or somebody.
His nose was long, drooping, profoundly
melancholy,—if such an expression may be
permitted in reference to that particular
feature. For the rest, his lips had a lachrymose
twist; his stature was small; his head
large, bald, and loosely set on his shoulders;
his manner of dressing himself eccentric, on
the side of smartness; his age about five-and-
forty; his condition that of a single man.
Such was Mr. Phippen, the Martyr to
Dyspepsia, and the guest of the vicar of Long
Beckley.

Miss Sturch, the governess, may be briefly
and accurately described as a young lady who
had never been troubled with an idea or a
sensation since the day when she was born.
She was a little, plump, quiet, white-
skinned, smiling, neatly-dressed girl, wound
up accurately to the performance of certain
duties at certain times; and possessed of an
inexhaustible vocabulary of common-place