and has there not been ever since a deadly feud in consequence between both branches of the family? Verily the hand of the Lord is upon them, but all his vengeance has not yet fallen."

"We should be the more thankful that Sir John is left to us," cried the landlord, who considered him as his patron, and had often joined with him in a cavalier song,-" and, if I mistake not, I have seen you, spite of your preaching, sitting in this hall, ay, and sharing his broken victuals, and quaffing his ale when it happened not to be a fast-day." "To do the Lord a service," replied the old woman, we may lawfully enter the tents of the enemy, even as the spies of Joshua feasted in the house of Rahab, and as Daniel was present in the banquetting hall of Belshazzar. But neither the.

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headed by the gentry and clergy, and in some instances showed themselves disposed to exercise club-law, and retaliate, upon the defenceless, those plundering inroads to which they had been themselves exposed. Cromwell, when lieutenant-general, was sent against several formidable parties in the West, many of whom he persuaded to return to their homes; but at Hambleton Hill, near Stratton, a band of about 4000, stood upon their guard, in an old Roman work, deeply trenched, and repulsed his troop at the passage into the fort. Desborough, however, attacking them in the rear, they were dispersed, and many prisoners taken, with twelve colours, on one of which was written:

"If you offer to plunder or take our cattel,
Be assured we will bid you battel."

Babylonian idolater, nor the people of Jericho, were worse than this accursed Sir John Compton. He has sinned against the Holy Ghost-he is marked for destruction, even as

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Dang thee, foul mouthed taud !" cried the warrener, "what hast thee to say against Sir John? Pest upon thee for an old beldame of Babylon ! gie us no more of thy papistry, or thy lips shall have a taste of my leathern thong."

"Out upon her for a scurrel witch!" exclaimed another, "to the horse-pond with her, and swim her for her life."

"If she be, in sooth, one of the accursed Amalekites, and a woman of Canaan," added the pedlar, with a sanctimonious look, "twere pleasant in the sight of the Lord to have her smothered in the mud."

"Gag the slanderous old mass-monger! away with her! the horse-pond, the horse-pond!" cried three or four at once.

In vain did the good-natured grazier counsel dame Laurence to pocket her drinking-horn and trudge, since she had chosen the wrong neighbourhood for venting her abuse of the Comptons. She continued her anathemas and predictions with more bitterness than ever, though she retained a calmness of manner that seemed little adapted to the rancour of her words; and the warrener, with some others of the party, were preparing to put their threats into immediate execution, when the

landlord interfered, exclaiming-" Nay, nay, my worthies, let us never lay angry hands upon a woman, and one moreover, who is as crazy as Tom o' Bedlam. Better troll a catch than souse a witch, and pour wine down our own throats than water down hers. Ods pittikins! we meet here to sing, drink, and be merry, and I am the leader of the band to set you a good example, and he that will match me with a rousing chorus, shall have next pot for nothing

'So here's to the man that delights in Sol-fa,
For sack is his only rosin.

A load of heigho is not worth a ha! ha!

He's a man for my money that draws in :

Then a pin for the muck, and a pin for ill luck,
"Tis better be blithe and frolic,

Than sigh out our breath, or invite our own death,
By the gout, or the stone, or the colick.' "

It is doubtful whether this inn-keeping Orpheus would have succeeded in pacifying his customers, who were beginning to rage like wild beasts, and have been able to rescue dame Lawrence from the horse-pond, had not the attention of the whole party been diverted by the sudden arrival of a courier on a smoking horse, who, desiring the boy to wipe the dust out of his steed's nostrils with some wet hay, called hastily to the landlord for a gill of sack.

"A gill, master Winbolt?" cried the landlord. "why, surely you havn't forgotten the ballad :—

'Hang the Presbyter's gill,
Bring a pint of sack, Will,

More orthodox of the two;

Tho' a slender dispute

Will strike the elf mute,

He's one of the honester crew." "

"Thou art a bold cock to crow so loudly to the old tune," said the courier; " but a pint let it be, so it be quick, for I bear dispatches, and must cross the Weald, and call at Hever Castle, ere I draw bit or loose girth. But what pastimes toward in these parts, and what fool's game is Sir John Compton playing that sets the red-coats a marching for Brambletye House ?"

"The red-coats, master Winbolt?" exclaimed the landlord, whose face suddenly assumed the same hue, "ods pittikins, what mean ye?"

"Neither more nor less than that I passed a troop of the Lord Protector's own regiment of Ironsides, watering their horses at Withyham bridge, who inquired the way to Brambletye House, and from their conversation I gathered that they had an order to search the premises and arrest Sir John. So let not your tongue wear too light a snaffle, my merry landlord, for a new ballad may be paid by an old grudge; better be silent on your own tree than sing in a cage; and a joke may be sharp, but a sword is sharper, with which caution I give you good den."

Dang the fellow," cried the warrener, with a

chop-fallen look, "where were it he zeed the redcoats?"--"At Withyam Bridge," replied the landlord, whereupon the former applied his thong lustily to his dapple grey poney, and was out of sight in a twinkling.

"Said I not sooth ?" ejaculated the old woman, while a momentary triumph lighted up her generally inanimate features" the Lord is slow to wrath, but his hour of anger comes at last. The Comptons are a doomed race; the curse of Cain is upon them, for they have slaughtered God's holy image. The stone is in the sling, and the bolt is in the bow, and the house where the crime was committed shall not long be covered with a roof to shelter one of the accursed and sacrilegious tribe.” At these words she departed, still muttering denunciations of vengeance against the objects of her wrath, and the company at the Swan dispersed themselves several ways, not less anxious to circulate the news they had learned, than to avoid the suspicion that might attach to them for tippling at the house of an old cavalier soldier, and a singer of irreverend songs, when the troops of the Protector were known to be in the neighbourhood.

Brambletye, or, as it is termed in Doomsday Book, Branbertie House, the point to which the Parliament-troops were directing their march, stands upon the extreme borders of Ashdown Forest, in the county of Sussex. After the Conquest, it became the property of the Earl of Mortain and Cornwall,