Lord--was no sportsman, and one morning, when all his guests were
engaged among the stubbles of September, he mounted his quiet palfrey,
and gladly took his way to the Manor-house.

It was towards the latter end of the month, and one of the earliest of
the autumnal fogs hung thinly over the landscape. As the Earl wound along
the sides of the hill on which his castle was built, the scene on which
he gazed below received from the grey mists capriciously hovering over
it, a dim and melancholy wildness. A broader and whiter vapour, that
streaked the lower part of the valley, betrayed the course of the
rivulet; and beyond, to the left, rose wan and spectral, the spire of the
little church adjoining Lester's abode. As the horseman's eye wandered to
this spot, the sun suddenly broke forth, and lit up as by enchantment,
the quiet and lovely hamlet embedded, as it were, beneath,--the cottages,
with their gay gardens and jasmined porches, the streamlet half in mist,
half in light, while here and there columns of vapour rose above its
surface like the chariots of the water genii, and broke into a thousand
hues beneath the smiles of the unexpected sun: But far to the right, the
mists around it yet unbroken, and the outline of its form only visible,
rose the lone house of the Student, as if there the sadder spirits of the
air yet rallied their broken armament of mist and shadow.

The Earl was not a man peculiarly alive to scenery, but he now
involuntarily checked his horse, and gazed for a few moments on the
beautiful and singular aspect which the landscape had so suddenly
assumed. As he so gazed, he observed in a field at some little distance,
three or four persons gathered around a bank, and among them he thought
he recognised the comely form of Rowland Lester. A second inspection
convinced him that he was right in his conjecture, and, turning from the
road through a gap in the hedge, he made towards the group in question.