what I had heard was true. It has been restored, and now-with new buttresses, patched walls and columns, repaired mouldings, the belfry accessible by a spiral stair, and a new-tiled roof which exhibits whitewash inside between the rafters-it only waits interior fittings to be once more available as a place of worship. The ivy has been stripped from the tower, and the jackdaws, driven from their old haunt, keep up a perpetual remonstrance from the tops of the neighbouring trees.

"It all depends on the preacher," said one of the masons, whom I asked as to the prospect of getting a congregation; "we don't mind going five or six miles. o'Sundays to hear a man that can keep us awake. But if 'tis only to sleep, we can do that at home."

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The foreman who told me he was fro' Aberdeen," thought it a pity that he had not been ordered to 'point" the old walls all over, to make them match with the new work, thereby proving himself of the same school as some of our modern architects, who mistake smoothness, and what they call "finish," for architectural effect.

Whither next?—I had an invitation in my pocket to Wallington, Sir Walter Trevelyan's pleasant seat: once a stronghold of the Jacobites, now famous for hospitality and its museum of natural history; but the thought of walking thither, thirteen miles, by crosscountry roads in such weather, was too formidable even for me. So I returned to the inn, and taking the highway, tramped the ten miles to the railway station at Morpeth. From the top of the long hill up which the road ascends from the Coquet, I had a view on one hand of old Simonside rising grandly aloft, clad in his wintry robe; on the other, of the sea.

In the village of Long Horsley I saw three boys driving a pig; one holding a string perhaps twenty-five feet long, fastened to the grunter's hind leg; the other two each armed with a whip, making vigorous demonstrations after the manner of boys. Tickled at the sight, I exclaimed, "What! does it take you three to drive one pig? In my country one boy will drive forty pigs."

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Hey, but no sic pigs as thot yane," answered the one who held the string.

Piggy, however, kept well on a-head, as if liking a tight rein, giving no trouble to anybody. As the procession descended the hill from the village, the two boys cracking their whips, a young fellow working on a midden on the farther bank stopped to look down on it. I stopped too, and calling across the road to him asked, "Which o'them four's the cleverest?"

He went off at once into contortions, and a hoarse hu, hu, hu, haw, haw, haw, ho, ho, ho! but at last came his reply struggling forth :

"The fawst yane."-The foremost one.