cheek, I should have thought him likely to outlive the very oaks around
the hamlet church where he presided. But the cheek was worn and hectic,
and seemed to indicate that the keen fire which burns at the deep heart,
unseen, but unslaking, would consume the mortal fuel, long before Time
should even have commenced his gradual decay.

"You have travelled, then, much, Sir?" said I, and the tone of my voice
was that of curiosity.

The good Cure penetrated into my desire to hear something of his
adventures; and few are the recluses who are not gratified by the
interest of others, or who are unwilling to reward it by recalling those
portions of life most cherished by themselves. Before we parted that
night, he told me his little history. He had been educated for the
army; before he entered the profession he had seen the daughter of a
neighbour, loved her, and the old story,--she loved him again, and died
before the love passed the ordeal of marriage. He had no longer a
desire for glory, but he had for excitement. He sold his little
property and travelled, as he had said, for nearly fourteen years,
equally over the polished lands of Europe and the far climates where
Truth seems fable and Fiction finds her own legends realized or
excelled.

He returned home poor in pocket and wearied in spirit. He became what I
beheld him. "My lot is fixed now," said he, in conclusion; "but I find
there is all the difference between quiet and content: my heart eats
itself away here; it is the moth fretting the garment laid by, more than
the storm or the fray would have worn it."

I said something, commonplace enough, about solitude, and the blessings