the circumstances under which he was encountered, coming from the opposite coast with a foreign fisherman, and concealing himself amidst them in a fog, gave him very much the appearance of being one of those refugee English, some of whom had already been detected acting as spies to the Dutch. Jocelyn, who thought it rather hard that he should be thus suspected by both parties of enacting a character which he held in particular abhorrence, indignantly recited his birth, parentage, and education, and made angry professions of his loyalty.

"You may be a spy for all that," bluntly replied Sir John; "they are all apt to be plaguy loyal when detected: I should be sorry to run so well-timbered a fellow up at the yardarm, but I cannot let you proceed without informing his Highness; so you may e'en go on board the Royal Charles, and make out your own story the best way you can. One of the ship's boats was accordingly lowered and manned, orders being given to the men to carry Jocelyn

*

and the Fleming on board the Flag ship, commanded by his Royal Highness the Duke of York. At the time of Jocelyn's mounting ladder of the Royal Charles, its illustrious commander was standing on the deck, attended by the Earl of Falmouth, Mr. Boyle, and Lord Muskerry, the latter of whom fortunately knew our hero personally, and gladly vouched for his identity. The duke smiled at the overvigilance of Sir John Lawson; and apologising very courteously for this interruption given to his voyage, informed Jocelyn he was at liberty to resume it whenever he thought fit. At the request of Lord Muskerry he remained on board while his lordship wrote a letter to his wife, which our hero undertook to deliver;

All three of whom were killed by one shot in the engagement that followed with the Dutch, on the 3d of June, 1665.

† Afterwards Vicountess Purbeck, well known as the Princesse de Babylon, in the lively pages of de Grammont, who visits her foibles with unsparing raillery, though he says nothing of that generous and magnificent spirit which ultimately led to the sale and disper

and immediately upon receiving it reimbarked on board the fishing-boat, and continued his voyage for England.

It was well that the weather proved moderate and favourable, for the bark to which Jocelyn had entrusted himself was not calculated to inspire much confidence, although her owner availed himself of the unanswerable argument that she had never sunk with him yet, and it was not likely she would begin such pranks in her old age, and after so long an acquaintance. Had any fair plea been afforded her, it is not at all improbable she might have proved somewhat skittish in this respect; but, with the aid of a summer sky and propitious gales, they entered the mouth of the Thames in safety. After they had passed Gravesend, the voyagers began to wonder at the unusual accumulation of shipping in the river, and the great number of people in sion of all her vast estates. When the inhabitants of Tunbridge Wells are enjoying the shades of their noble Grove, they should recollect that they owe it to the munificence of that liberal-minded woman.

each vessel,-appearances that kept continually increasing as they reached London. Although the Fleming was not very loquacious, he did hail one or two of the craft they passed, but their crews cared not to answer them, and they passed on without parley to the neighbourhood of Stepney, where they both landed.

Here the mystery was presently solved, for Jocelyn learned, to his no small consternation, that the plague had been raging for some time in London, and that the many families they had seen afloat in their progress from Gravesend were citizens who had fled from the town, in the hope of avoiding the devastating infection, which, upon an average of the last nine weeks, had carried off a thousand every day. Uncertain how to act, and without other friends in London, he determined to proceed to Alderman Staunton's, in Aldersgate Street, in the hope of either gaining some tidings of Tracy, or learning how far he might venture to appear in public, without peril from the former order for his ar

rest. But he was so appalled and horror-stricken at the dismal aspect of the death-devoted city as he advanced, that his courage failed him :-he was sick at heart; and was once or twice upon the point of turning round and fleeing from a place which the Lord seemed to have doomed to become an Aceldama, and to be utterly delivered over to the destroying Angel. Even in those streets which were usually the most thronged, there was a dead and awful silence; the grass grew rankly between the stones of Cornhill and Cheapside; there were no carriages stirring, although it was mid-day; and the few people that were seen moving about, here and there, walked in the middle of the road, for fear infection from the houses; smelling to phials, chewing an antidote, or trusting to some philter, charm, or exorcism; while, by the dumb terror of their looks and the quickness of their progress, they might rather be taken for gliding phantoms than human creatures.

Whole rows and streets of houses were shut