to see Mrs. Butts--perhaps she might be in want and I could help her.  I shrank from writing to her or from making myself known to her, and at last I hit upon the expedient of answering her advertisement in a feigned name, and requesting her to call at the King’s Arms hotel upon a gentleman who wished to engage a widow lady to teach his children.  To prevent any previous inquiries on her part, I said that my name was Williams, that I lived in the country at some little distance from the town, but that I should be there on business on the day named.  I took up my quarters at the King’s Arms the night before.  It seemed very strange to be in an inn in the place in which I was born.  I retired early to my bedroom, and looked out in the clear moonlight over the river.  The landscape seemed haunted by ghosts of my former self.  At one particular point, so well known, I stood fishing.  At another, equally well known, where the water was dangerously deep, I was examining the ice; and round the corner was the boathouse where we kept the little craft in which I had voyaged so many hundreds of miles on excursions upwards beyond where the navigation ends, or, still more fascinating, down to where the water widens and sails are to be seen, and there is a foretaste of the distant sea.  It is no pleasure to me to revisit scenes in which earlier days have been passed.  I detest the sentimental melancholy which steals over me; the sense of the lapse of time, and the reflection that so many whom I knew are dead.  I would always, if possible, spend my holiday in some new scene, fresh to me, and full of new interest.  I slept but little, and when the morning came, instead of carrying out my purpose of wandering through the streets, I was so sick of the mood by which I had been helplessly overcome, that I sat at a distance from the window in the coffee-room, and read diligently last week’s Bell’s Weekly Messenger.  My reading, however, was nothing.  I do not suppose I comprehended the simplest paragraph.  My thoughts were away, and I watched the clock slowly turning towards the hour when Ellen was to call.  I foresaw that I should not be able to speak to her at the inn.  If I have anything particular to say to anybody, I can always say it so much better out of doors.  I dreaded the confinement of the room, and the necessity for looking into her face.  Under the sky, and in motion, I should be more at liberty.  At last eleven struck from the church in the square, and five minutes afterwards the waiter entered to announce Mrs. Butts.  I was therefore right, and she was “E.  B.”  I was sure that I should not be recognised.  Since I saw her last I had grown a beard, my hair had got a little grey, and she was always a little short-sighted.  She came in, and as she entered she put away over her bonnet her thick black veil.  Not ten seconds passed before she was seated on the opposite side of the table to that on which I was sitting, but I re-read in her during those ten seconds the whole history of