During the remainder of our ride to Stockwell his silence plainly proceeded from thoughtfulness; but he so managed himself as to appear easy in mind, and not exploring any vein of thought. He passed from subject to subject, seemingly in no humour to investigate any; and yet it soon became apparent that Mrs. Paddock and her flock occupied his imagination. I cannot give a livelier picture of his manner, than by sketching the tenour of his conversation, and the way in which he insensibly threw out, as it were in passing, a casual remark; like the saunterer on the roadside, who, in heedless rumination, snatches a leaf or a flower.

“I don't know,” said he, “how I shall like this country; the green hills of Dungowan were more agreeable, after all, to my taste, than these wild and interminable woods.”

“I trust you do not begin to weary already.”

“No; but there is little to interest one here; the eventless histories of settler and every day alike. By the bye, that old lady you were telling me of, must be something like a new army-list or an almanack to you.”

Contrasted with the interest he had previously taken in her story, this jangled on my hearing like affectation; it struck me, indeed, as much more so than the manner in which he disclosed himself on his own island, when our acquaintanceship commenced; but he pursued the thought no farther, adding, however, as if in sequence to the sense,

“Land is still here so much of a commodity, that no one seems to buy for an income, but only to sell again.”