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 finished, for at that moment a knock came at the door, followed by a servant bringing in a letter all moist and dripping, a trifling incident, that, however, sufficed to transport us back again from our dreamy wanderings amongst sunny summer scenes to that drear December night—our fireside travels came to an abrupt end!

"What a night for any one to be out," I muttered, as I took the proffered letter, glancing first at the handwriting, which was unfamiliar, then at the post-*mark, which bore the name of a remote Lincolnshire town, yet we knew no one in that whole wide county. Who could the sender be? we queried. He proved to be an unknown friend, who in a good-natured mood had written to suggest, in case we should be at a loss for a fresh country to explore during the coming summer, that we should try Lincolnshire; he further went on to remark, lest we should labour under the popular and mistaken impression (which we did) that it was a land more or less given over to "flats, fens and fogs," that he had visitors from London staying with him with their bicycles, who complained loudly of the hills in his neighbourhood; furthermore, "just to whet our appetites," as he put it, there followed a tempting list, "by way of sample," of some of the good things scenic, antiquarian, and archæological, that awaited us, should we only come. Amongst the number—to enumerate only a few in chance order, and leaving out Lincoln and its cathedral—there were Crowland's ruined abbey, set away in the heart of the Fens; numerous old churches, that by virtue of their