On the contrary, I persuaded myself, that all I had to apprehend was some temporary alienation of affection--perhaps a rustication of a few weeks, which I thought would rather please me than otherwise, since it would give me an opportunity of setting about my unfinished version of Orlando Furioso, a poem which I longed to render into English verse.

I suffered this belief to get such absolute possession of my mind, that I had resumed my blotted papers, and was busy in meditation on the oft-recurring rhymes of the Spenserian stanza, when I heard a low and cautious tap at the door of my apartment.

"Come in," I said, and Mr.Owen entered.

So regular were the motions and habits of this worthy man, that in all probability this was the first time he had ever been in the second story of his patron's house, however conversant with the first; and I am still at a loss to know in what manner he discovered my apartment.
"Mr.Francis," he said, interrupting my expression of surprise and pleasure at seeing, him, "I do not know if I am doing well in what I am about to say--it is not right to speak of what passes in the compting-house out of doors--one should not tell, as they say, to the post in the warehouse, how many lines there are in the ledger.

But young Twineall has been absent from the house for a fortnight and more, until two days since." "Very well, my dear sir, and how does that concern us ?" "Stay, Mr.Francis;--your father gave him a private commission; and I am sure he did not go down to Falmouth about the pilchard affair; and the Exeter business with Blackwell and Company has been settled; and the mining people in Cornwall, Trevanion and Treguilliam, have paid all they are likely to pay; and any other matter of business must have been put through my books:--in short, it's my faithful belief that Twineall has been down in the north." "Do you really suppose ?" so said I, somewhat startled.
"He has spoken about nothing, sir, since he returned, but his new boots, and his Ripon spurs, and a cockfight at York--it's as true as the multiplication-table.