CHAPTER XI.

It was about a year after Leonard's discovery of the family manuscripts
that Parson Dale borrowed the quietest pad-mare in the squire's stables,
and set out on an equestrian excursion. He said that he was bound on
business connected with his old parishioners of Lansmere; for, as it has
been incidentzlly implied in a previous chapter, he had been connected
with that borough town (and, I may here add, in the capacity of curate)
before he had been inducted into the living of Hazeldean.

It was so rarely that the parson stirred from home, that this journey
to a town more than twenty miles off was regarded as a most daring
adventure, both at the Hall and at the Parsonage. Mrs. Dale could not
sleep the whole previous night with thinking of it; and though she had
naturally one of her worst nervous headaches on the eventful morn, she
yet suffered no hands less thoughtful than her own to pack up the saddle-
bags which the parson had borrowed along with the pad. Nay, so
distrustful was she of the possibility of the good man's exerting the
slightest common-sense in her absence, that she kept him close at her
side while she was engaged in that same operation of packing-up,--showing
him the exact spot in which the clean shirt was put; and how nicely the
old slippers were packed up in one of his own sermons. She implored him
not to mistake the sandwiches for his shaving-soap, and made him observe
how carefully she had provided against such confusion, by placing them as
far apart from each other as the nature of saddle-bags will admit. The
poor parson--who was really by no means an absent man, but as little
likely to shave himself with sandwiches and lunch upon soap as the most