Quoted, and signed, to do a deed of shame."
--Shakspeare.--King John.


"He is a scholar, if a man may trust
The liberal voice of Fame, in her report.
Myself was once a student, and indeed
Fed with the self-same humour he is now."
--Ben Jonson.--Every Man in his Humour.

The two sisters pursued their walk along a scene which might well be
favoured by their selection. No sooner had they crossed the stile, than
the village seemed vanished into earth; so quiet, so lonely, so far from
the evidence of life was the landscape through which they passed. On
their right, sloped a green and silent hill, shutting out all view beyond
itself, save the deepening and twilight sky; to the left, and immediately
along their road lay fragments of stone, covered with moss, or shadowed
by wild shrubs, that here and there, gathered into copses, or breaking
abruptly away from the rich sod, left frequent spaces through which you
caught long vistas of forestland, or the brooklet gliding in a noisy and
rocky course, and breaking into a thousand tiny waterfalls, or mimic
eddies. So secluded was the scene, and so unwitnessing of cultivation,
that you would not have believed that a human habitation could be at
hand, and this air of perfect solitude and quiet gave an additional charm
to the spot.

"But I assure you," said Ellinor, earnestly continuing a conversation
they had begun, "I assure you I was not mistaken, I saw it as plainly as
I see you."