CHAPTER IV.

The letter, madam; have you none for me?--The Rendezvous.
Provide surgeons.--Lover's Progress.

Our solitary traveller pursued his way with the light step and gay
spirits of youth and health.

"Turn gypsy, indeed!" he said, talking to himself; "there is something
better in store for me than that. Ay, I have all the world before me
where to choose--not my place of rest. No, many a long year will pass
away ere any place of rest will be my choice! I wonder whether I
shall find the letter at W----; the letter, the last letter I shall
ever have from home but it is no home to me now; and I--I, insulted,
reviled, trampled upon, without even a name--well, well, I will earn a
still fairer one than that of my forefathers. They shall be proud to
own me yet." And with these words the speaker broke off abruptly,
with a swelling chest and a flashing eye; and as, an unknown and
friendless adventurer, he gazed on the expanded and silent country
around him, he felt like Castruccio Castrucani that he could stretch
his hands to the east and to the west and exclaim, "Oh, that my power
kept pace with my spirit, then should it grasp the corners of the
earth!"

The road wound at last from the champaign country, through which it
had for some miles extended itself, into a narrow lane, girded on
either side by a dead fence. As the youth entered this lane, he was
somewhat startled by the abrupt appearance of a horseman, whose steed