information, gave him some uneasiness, from his apprehension that it might occasion him to be thought a partizan of the insurgents; although he was perfectly ignorant of the transaction until after its occurrence; while the non-appearance of his nephew immediately awakened a thousand misgivings in his mind. During their short colloquy on the subject of the rebellion, he had suspected from his looks and hurried manner, that he meditated some enterprize which he did not choose to avow; and he had found no difficulty in discovering that they entertained diametrically opposite sentiments as to the course which it became a prudent patriot to adopt under the circumstances of the country. Shrewd, circumspect, and wary, Goldingham had not only foreseen from the first the fatal termination of Monmouth's desperate adventure, but judging from the relentless and bigoted character of the King, that he would visit the insurgents with a double wrath, both as rebels and as heretics, he anticipated an unsparing cruelty in his proceedings, when he should have crushed their

projects. His anxiety on Reuben's account, therefore, was not only painfully intense, as his protracted absence confirmed all his suspicions, but filled him with keen apprehensions as to his own liability to be compromised, when it became bruited abroad in the neighbourhood that his nearest relation, and his brass cannons, were in the service of the rebels. As a measure of precaution, therefore, he went before a neighbouring magistrate, accompanied by one of his tenants, who had witnessed the dismantling of his little batteries, and who made a deposition upon oath of the whole occurrence; to which Goldingham added the circumstance that his nephew had not since been seen, wishing it to be inferred that he had been forcibly carried off by the rebels, though this of course constituted no part of his statement. At all events, he considered it an exculpation of himself; while it might eventually benefit Reuben to have thus publicly recorded the fact of his disappearance, whatever might have occasioned

it.

Such was the sole foundation for Hewson's

1

story to Reuben, that his uncle had been arrested and released upon bail, although it was perfectly true that soldiers had been quartered in his house, and that his grounds were beset with people upon the look-out for his nephew, his name being now enrolled in the list of the gentry for whose apprehension a reward was offered. Such rude inmates quarrelling and revelling in his hall, especially as they chanced to belong to an Irish regiment, and professed the religion which his diseased imagination invariably connected with Popish plots and massacres, could not fail to irritate his terrors, even to a preposterous excess. He became a perpetual hog in armour, his silken panoply and Protestant flail being never laid aside, even for a moment. What little sleep he obtained was under the special guard of this shirt of woven mail, with the additional protection of loaded pistols by his bed-side; a bristling and uneasy apparatus, which by stimulating terrific dreams, scared his mind while it afforded but a doubtful security to his body. If he took his horn-headed cane, and ventured to walk

round the grounds, he detected evesdroppers skulking about the premises, who were, in fact, lurking to gather tidings of Reuben, but whom the prevailing malady of his mind instantly converted into truculent assassins and plotters. When, in addition to these manifold subjects of annoyance and vexation, his thoughts reverted, as they perpetually did, to Reuben, whom he really loved,-who was now wandering he knew not whither as a proscribed rebel, and whose capture would probably be followed by an ignominious death, it may readily be supposed that his self-gratulating "Hem!" was no longer heard; that the lump sugar in his waistcoat pocket, which found a rapid consumption when he was in a complacent mood, remained in its depositary unnoticed and undiminished, and that he wore a most rueful look, when in his solitary rambles he ejaculated "Wheugh! is this the peace, safety, and tranquillity, I was to find in the country? Adzooks! I wish I was at this moment sitting behind my great ledger in Throgmorton Street."

Two or three days after the disturbance

occasioned in his house by the first notification of the Duke's landing, he went over to the Rookery for the purpose of gathering tidings respecting the progress and prospects of the invaders, when, on reaching the bowling-green in front of the house, he encounterd Lady Crockatt, whom he had not seen since she had so unceremoniously deprived him of his carriage, for the purpose of effecting her own flight with more rapidity from the supposed dangers of a popish massacre. The result of her selfish finesse upon that occasion had accorded rather with her merits than her anticipations. Timothy, not knowing very accurately the crossroad to her ladyship's mansion, betrayed by the darkness of the night, drowsy with the ale he had been drinking, and incensed at being ordered out for a stranger, when Rupert, his favourite horse, was known to be tender in one of his fore feet, had contrived to find his way into a newly ploughed field, where he presently stuck fast, and informed her ladyship that he had come to the end of his journey, since he could neither get the carriage forwards nor