experiment not your present confession, for both might be equally dangerous, if the Protector

,,

"A fico for the Roundhead rogue!" interrupted Sir John. -"I hope he will soon be in our power. He has had one tumble from his seat while riding in his coach and six round Hyde Park, with his wife Joan* beside him, and his secretary Thurloe in the boot; and I hope we shall presently overset him from the car of government, and make him ride in a different vehicle to Tyburn, that we may verify the ballad

'Every day and hour hath show'd us his power,

But now he hath show'd us his art;

His first reproach was a fall from his coach,
His next will be from a cart.'

When the old king's statue was thrown down from the gallery at St. Paul's, it alighted, I remember, upon its feet, which was accepted as a good omen that his family should still stand firm to the last; but if this pestilent image of a king be once fairly tumbled down, I will take good care that he shall not fall upon his feet, and I hope, before we hunt another of his red-nosed namesakes, that we shall have hauled down the original by a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether."

Sir John now informed his companion, who was a steady listener, though a shy talker, that by the latest accounts from St. Malo's, the king was quite ready to embark with an army under the Count de Marsin, the Prince de Conde's general, who had been lately honoured with the order of the Garter; that Colonel Russel, Mr. Mordaunt, and the principal royalists, as well as the chief citizens of London, were prepared to rise the moment a landing should be effected; that the usurper, as he termed him, could not depend upon the support of his own army, beyond two or three regiments; and finally, that the prospects of the king and the royalists never looked more pleasant and promising. His imagination carrying the sanguine baronet to the successful consummation of their enterprise, and the celebration of their victory over a cup of hippocras or Gascoigne wine, he began to express his triumph in the usual way, by singing with a lusty voice: :

"Now we're met in a knot, let's take t' other pot,

And chirp o'er a cup of nectar;

Let's think on a charm, to keep us from harm,
From the fiend and the foul Protector.

"Heretofore at a brunt, a cross would have done't,

But now

There he abruptly broke off in the middle of his song, and as suddenly stopped his horse upon hearing the distant report of a piece of ordnance. After a minute's interval a second sounded, when his face, which had been all the time gradually reddening, coloured up to a most fiery and portentous glow, as he ejaculated,-"Ud's Sacrament! it's the two falconets a-top of Brambletye!"

"It did indeed sound like two drakes, or some of those smaller pieces of artillery," observed Sir William-"but what of that? they may be exercising the troops at East Grinstead.”

“East devil!” exclaimed Sir John, petulantly,—“it came from Bram

Such was the nickname invariably bestowed by the Cavaliers upon Cromwell's wife, though her real name was Elizabeth. The accident alluded to occurred in July, 1654. The pistol, which the Protector always carried in the pocket, went off; but with his usual good fortune he escaped all injury.

bletye; I can swear to the sound of the falconets, and I ordered them to be fired only in case of discovery, or of any sudden attack upon the house."

"God be good unto us!" cried Sir William,- -"then we are betrayed

I was always afraid of this ;" and ho turned as pale as his companion was crimson.

"We may still be in time to lend a helping hand," cried Sir John. So saying, he clapped spurs to his steed, and gallopped forwards, followed by the appalled Sir William, who was rather anxious to learn the real nature of the danger, than disposed to share in any Quixotic enterprise for the relief of Brambletye, if it were beleaguered. They had proceeded in this way for some time, without exchanging a single word, so completely were they both absorbed by their different apprehensions, when they unexpectedly encountered Nick Groombridge, from whom they presently learned the imminent jeopardy in which Brambletye House was placed, and in which its owner and his associates threatened to be ultimately involved.

"If this be the case," said Sir William, "we may be sure that the whole plot is discovered, and it would be madness to proceed. I dare say, warrants are already out for our apprehension, and we have nothing to do but to consider the best method of effecting our escape, for there will be instant and hot pursuit. Have you prepared in any way for this unpleasant emergency?"

"Ods heart! Sir William, I never gave it a thought: - have you?"

"I have already been once in custody," replied Sir William, "and as I have no wish to wear the stone doublet a second time, I have anticipated this dilemma, and have already arranged a little plan for my escape." "The deuce you have! what is it?"

"It is only calculated for one," replied Sir William, dryly.

"And you have doubtless provided a place of immediate concealment where is it?"

"If I were to mention it, it would no longer deserve that name." "Humph!" ejaculated Sir John, in a pettish and disappointed voice "and what then do you recommend me to do?"

"There is but one rule in these cases," answered Sir William, "which is, to separate immediately, that each may have the better chance of escape, and not more than one at a time fall into the hands of our pursuers, if we are destined to be taken, from which, however, Heaven preserve us both!"— With these words, he turned his horse's head, and struck at a sharp pace into the forest, influenced to this unceremonious proceeding not less by the natural distrust of his character, than by his firm conviction that the discovery of their plot was mainly attributable to the intemperate sallies and foolhardy conduct of Sir John, against whose active participation in their measures or counsels he had always vehemently protested.

The latter would probably have vented his indignation at this desertion in no very temperate terms, but that his thoughts, ever more intent upon the safety of others than upon his own, reverted painfully to them of his household who might have become compromised by his recent proceedings, and he determined, at all events, to proceed towards Brambletye House, to see what could be done towards their extrication. He was already in the immediate vicinity of Withyham Bridge, where the Protector's troops had halted upon their advance, when a horseman bursting through the bushes, gallopped towards him, and as Sir John never hunted without pistols, and concluded the fellow to be hurrying forwards to apprehend him, he levelled his weapon, and had almost pulled the trigger ere he discovered that it was Sergeant Whittaker, who was coming to seek out his master and share his dangers. Having learned from him the surrender of Brambletye House, and that the warrant of apprehension was directed only against himself, he spurred into the thick covert, away from the high road, and called a council

of war with his two faithful retainers. Whittaker had nothing to advise or propose, except that he should accompany his master whithersoever he might go. Sir John thanked him heartily for this new proof of his devotedness to his person, but knew his blunt reckless character too well to select him for an office that required the utmost wariness and circumspection."No, no, Whittaker," he exclaimed, "you are as bad a one as myself at enacting any thing with a double face, and I cannot pronounce a more perfect disqualification."

The sergeant was therefore entreated to take charge of Jocelyn's safety, of whose arrest they were all ignorant. For this purpose he was provided with money, and instructed to convey him to the house of a relation in London, to whose present custody he might be confidently intrusted; while Sir John, at Groombridge's recommendation, once more turned his weary horse's head into the forest, and, guided by his companion, slowly made his way to a spot called Peppingford Warren, situated in the loneliest part of that unfrequented and thickly wooded tract. Here, in a miserable hovel, run up for the occasional accommodation of the warrener, without bed, provisions, or light, the vexed and indignant, but still stout-hearted Sir John, arrived towards the close of day, and prepared to take up his quarters for the night. Groombridge promised to revisit him before daybreak, with supplies of all sorts, as well as to concert measures for his future disposal; when, having recommended him to fasten the door, and not answer should the cottage be hailed by any chance wanderer, of which he said there was but little apprehension, he wished his master good night, and took his departure.

Left to his solitary, and, what he considered worse, his thirsty meditations, Sir John had full leisure to weigh the difference between sitting at the head of his own festive board, as proprietor of Brambletye House, to quaff Gascoigne wine of his own importation, and his present disconsolate plight, which condemned him to become a ruined wanderer and exile, if he were even fortunate enough to save his head from the formidable clutch of the man whom he detested above all others breathing. Wrath against this obnoxious individual predominated over every feeling of his own immediate losses and prospective perils. Utterly forgetting the conspiracy in which he had been engaged against the life of the Protector, he could think of nothing but the portentous prodigy that such a man should be enabled to convert him, Sir John Compton, of Brambletye House, into an outlaw; and the monstrous iniquity of his presuming to exercise this formidable power. "And all this outrageous injustice," he ejaculated to himself, "to be perpetrated against me by a canting Roundhead brewer of Huntingdon," for so the royalists delighted to call him, though there was no authority for the averment, and no disgrace in it if true. -- A murrain seize Sir Ralph Hopton," he continued, "for not doing his business effectually, when he first rode over him, and unhorsed him at the battle of Horncastle, and then knocked him down as he was rising and a pize upon my own clumsy arm for not better aiming the brickbat which I threw at his head from the top of the house at St. Clements! That we should all be trampled upon, too, by a crop-eared poltroon, who refused to head his regiment in a charge at the battle of Marston Moor, and suffered Crawford to do it for him, because he had been singed in the neck by the priming of one of his soldier's pistols! 'Sblood! who would have thought a few years ago, let me see, it can't be above seventeen or eighteen -ay, I recollect Sir Philip Warwick telling me, the same year the Scotch army first came into England, that upon his entering the House of Commons, he saw a fellow speaking, or rather squeaking, in a harsh untunable voice, who looked as clownish as a Yorkshire tike; his hat without a hatband; his sword stuck close to his side, like a carpenter's rule; and his face as red

-

and swollen as a drunken crowder's. That such a crop-eared cub as this should eject the lion, and come to be king of England! However, Rowley is at St. Malo's, and will presently come over with his mounseers to set matters to rights, and send the usurping knave to hold his last court at Tyburn."

With this comfortable assurance, Sir John having ensconced himself as well as he could in a crazy arm-chair, the only one in the hovel, and stretched out his legs upon a wooden stool, began to nod his head, and to huin to himself in a low voice

"The Dippers and Ranters, and Scotch Covenanters

That brag of their faith and their zeal,

May abound in their feignings, I'll make no complainings,
Nor will I their secrets reveal.

The poor Cavaliers, that still live in fears

Of prison and sequestration,

Though they keep Christmas day, are more honest than they ;
But honesty's quite out of fashion."

After completing the verse, his head dipped downwards with a deeper inclination, and he continued mumbling to himself at increasing intervals, and in more indistinct tones, "Roundhead rascal! - Brambletye! Flask of Hippocras! Yoicks, Tally-ho! At him, Rowley!

Red-nosed Noll! -No wine! Devilish dry!" when he finally fell asleep, and snored in a manner which would presently have convinced any of the chance wanderers to whom Groombridge had made allusion, that the hovel was not untenanted. Fortunately, however, none such approached, and there were no other listeners to his midnight melody than the lonely forest and the silent moon.

CHAPTER IV.

"Good tidings, my Lord Hastings, for the which
I do arrest thee, traitor! of high treason."

SHAKSPEARE.

ACCORDING to his promise, the warrener presented himself at the_hovel by dawn of day, while Sir John was yet snoring in his chair; and after repeated raps upon the wall with his cudgel, succeeded in breaking his slumbers, and getting him to open the door. Imagining himself at first to be in a dream, the worthy baronet rubbed his eyes, and stretched and stared upon his summoner with a look of most perplexed and vacant wonderment, from which his sensations of hunger and thirst, and the sight of the refreshments in Groombridge's basket, seemed to arouse him much more rapidly than could have been effected by any deliberate effort of the memory. Eagerly assisting in placing the viands upon a low shelf, for there was no table in the room, he fell to work with an activity proportioned to his long fast, and had despatched a rabbit-pie, which the warrener's wife had manufactured for their own Sunday dinner, together with the contents of a stone bottle, which proved to be a strong malt-liquor, called Double Bul, ere Groombridge had half completed his story of the alarm which had been created through the whole country by the discovery of the arms, and the conspiracy; of the calling out of the troops at East Grinstead; - of the meeting that was talked of to prepare a loyal address to the Protector; —and of the hot pursuit which had already commenced though the neigh

bourhood of Brambletye for the arrest of its proprietor. "Well now, honest Nick," exclaimed the baronet, smacking his lips, after finishing the last draught of the bottle, "you may tell me the whole of that story over again from the beginning, for the devil a word have I been listening to from first to last. Couldn't help it, Nick, upon my soul; too hungry to think of any thing else; but you may spout away now as long as you like, and I'll pay every attention to what you say, while I am just finishing my breakfast upon this nice bread and cheese."

Nick patiently recapitulated all the news he had picked up, and all the dangers with which Sir John was surrounded, ending with an earnest recommendation that he should not think of moving from his present hidingplace, till some plausible scheme had been devised for his escape. For the purpose of putting his pursuers upon a false scent, he proposed riding Sir John's horse, which had been left tethered in the immediate neighbourhood, to the opposite extremity of the forest, taking care to leave him in the vicinity of some place, where he would be shortly found and recognised. He rightly conjectured that the earliest and the most active hue and cry would be towards the coast, to which point the royalists generally directed themselves upon similar emergencies, for the chance of obtaining a passage to France or Flanders. To favour the supposition that his master had followed their example, he took advantage of the darkness to ride his hunter in that direction as far as he dared venture, when he left him on the high road, and bent his way back to his own cottage, choosing the most unfrequented paths, so that he did not reach home till the sun had been some time risen. After a short repose, he returned to the hovel with a fresh supply of provisions, and was heartily welcomed by Sir John, who had been little accustomed to solitary imprisonment, and began to complain bitterly of its irksomeness. Unable, however, to deny the prudence of submitting to it for a few days, until the first ardour of pursuit should have become a little cooled, he consented to prolong his confinement for that period, at the expiration of which it was proposed that he should assume some disguise, and endeavour to make his way to Brighthelmstead, then a miserable and obscure fishing-town, and the same from which the king had embarked after the unfortunate battle of Worcester. Groombridge suggested that as passes were now required for all travellers wearing a respectable appearance, he had better dress himself in a beggar's weeds and wallet, and begin his qualification for the character by cutting off all his hair, which, according to the cavalier fashion, he wore flowing down to his shoulders.

"Cut off my hair!" cried Sir John, indignantly; "become a crop-eared rascally Roundhead! I had rather the canting knaves should take me at once and cut my head off."

Groombridge, however, reminding him, that according to what he had heard tell, King Charles himself, after the fight of Worcester, had cut off his long hair, and buried it, together with his buff jacket and linen drawers, under the oak tree in which he concealed himself, Sir John felt all his scruples removed by so exalted an authority, and submitted to the operation forthwith, though not without venting an oath or a malediction against the rebels and Puritans for almost every lock that fell to the ground. The disguise had been procured and put on; his old habiliments, in imitation of the royal example, had been committed to the earth; his beard was suffered to grow; and he had reached the last evening but one to which he had limited his incarceration, when in the absence of Groombridge, and in the impatience of a confinement that cramped both his mind and body, he deterinined to venture out a little way in the dusk, just to stretch his legs, and breathe the fresh air. So renovating did he find the evening breeze, and so delightful was the sensation of recovering the free use of his limbs,