craft, and that a newly-invented hunting-saddle at the window caught
Walter's notice. The artful saddler persuaded the young traveller to
dismount and look at "the most convenientest and handsomest saddle what
ever was seed;" and the Corporal having lost no time in getting rid of
his encumbrance, Walter dismissed him to the inn with the horses, and
after purchasing the saddle, in exchange for his own, he sauntered into
the shop to look at a new snaffle. A gentleman's servant was in the shop
at the time, bargaining for a riding whip; and the shopboy, among others,
shewed him a large old-fashioned one, with a tarnished silver handle.
Grooms have no taste for antiquity, and in spite of the silverhandle, the
servant pushed it aside with some contempt. Some jest he uttered at the
time, chanced to attract Walter's notice to the whip; he took it up
carelessly, and perceived with great surprise that it bore his own crest,
a bittern, on the handle. He examined it now with attention, and
underneath the crest were the letters G. L., his father's initials.

"How long have you had this whip?" said he to the saddler, concealing the
emotion, which this token of his lost parent naturally excited.

"Oh, a nation long time, Sir," replied Mr. Holwell; "it is a queer old
thing, but really is not amiss, if the silver was scrubbed up a bit, and
a new lash put on; you may have it a bargain, Sir, if so be you have
taken a fancy to it."

"Can you at all recollect how you came by it," said Walter, earnestly;
"the fact is that I see by the crest and initials, that it belonged to a
person whom I have some interest in discovering."

"Why let me see," said the saddler, scratching the tip of his right ear,
"'tis so long ago sin I had it, I quite forgets how I came by it."