given to this atrocious proposition, they raised their weapons and looked at their comrade for the appointed notice of attack; a moment of fearful suspense which their intended victim employed in taking out a pocket match-box, striking a light, and puffing at the tinder, that he might coax up flame enough for his pipe; while he still preserved a phlegmatic indifference that might have convinced the most incredulous of his being utterly unacquainted with the subject of discussion. "Curse the fellow !" cried the conspirator, who was to have given the signal," he could never listen to us with so much composure if he understood a single word of the language. 'Twere to throw away a murder to cut his throat, so we may as well turn the Dutch boor adrift, and take better heed in future to examine our room, and look behind the screen before we proceed to business." It was precisely at this juncture that Jocelyn and Colonel Rathborn entered the apartment. A peculiar side-glance which Winky Boss cast at the former, intimated to him that he did not wish to be recognised; and as our hero was aware of the shrewdness concealed under his clownish exterior, he took the hint, and conducted himself towards him as if he had never seen him before. All the swords were quickly returned to their scabbards on the appearance of a stranger, and the party contented themselves with stating to the Colonel that, from the manner in which the Dutchman had been found concealed in the apartment, they considered him to be a spy, and were about to give him the spy's reward. Jocelyn, who spoke Dutch, volunteered to act as interpreter, and cross-questioning Boss in that language with an appearance of great severity, explained to the company that he had clambered in at the window for liquor, having mistaken the place for a public-house. To dispel every apprehension of future danger or betrayal, he added, that as the Dutchman was anxious to return to his own country, he would take him that evening on board a Danish vessel in the river, which was to sail next day for Rotterdam, and desire the captain, who was his particular friend, to see him safely transported to Holland. Many thanks were given for this proposition, which seemed to meet the wishes of all parties; Winky Boss was locked up in one of the rooms until it could be put in practice; and the remainder of the party proceeded immediately to dinner. During the repast, Jocelyn, who constantly saw fresh reason to distrust the desperadoes into whose society he had so unwaringly thrown himself, observed the utmost circumspection, discouraged every attempt to give the conversation a political turn, was cautious not to compromise himself by any unguarded expression, and withdrew as soon as possible, under the pretext of conveying the Dutchman to Greenwich, to put him on board the Danish ship before night-fall. It is unnecessary to state, that he had no real intention of this sort, having merely availed himself of the pretext to extricate him from the predicament in which he had found him. Instead of exporting that trusty though bibulous personage to Holland, he took him into his own service; and. though honest Boss, partly from drowsiness, and partly from the effect of liquor, had no very distinct recollection of the conversation he had overheard when concealed behind the screen, he retained enough of its general purport to deter. mine Jocelyn never to exchange another with the fanatical and dangerous Colonel Rathborn. Just as he quitted the house at Battersea, intending to walk to Lambeth and take boat, he passed a stranger, who, as soon as he approached, muffled himself up in his cloak and struck into the fields,—a circumstance which he by no means regretted, as he was most anxious to avoid being recognised as a frequenter of that suspicious residence, or an associate with its plotting inmates. CHAPTER VII. "Son of sixteen, Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire ; SHAKSPEARE. ENABLED now, by the complete restoration of his health, to bestir himself with activity, Jocelyn lost no time in instituting inquiries respecting Julia, but all his diligence proved unavailing in effecting any discovery of her retreat. Colonel Rathborn's conversation had directed his suspicions to the purlieus of the palace, in the first instance; and his search in that direction was proportionably keen. Baffled, however, in obtaining the smallest evidence that might justify his apprehensions, he determined to revisit the spot where he had rescued her, to inquire whether any of the neighbours had heard the orders given to the coachman, or marked in what direction he had driven; but the whole of Fleet street was an undistinguishable mass of ruins; the great fire spread as far as the Temple; and none but a few houseless wretches, or vagrants, prowling for plunder, were to be seen among the still-smoking rubbish. A space, above two miles in length, and one in breadth, presented a vast unbroken scene of hideous desolation, where locality could only be rudely traced by the disfigured fragments of some public monument or tower; while in the midst of the destroyed city, the calcined and blackened skeleton of St. Paul's church reared itself up, attesting, by its gigantic bones and fragments, the stupendous dimensions that it had once exhibited. Foiled in this project, he betook himself to Alderman Staunton's country-house, where he obtained an interview with that personage, who with infinite perturbation of manner, disclaimed all knowledge of Julia, or of her family, and once more implored Jocelyn never to renew such inquiries at his house. Respecting Constantia, he could give him no information of a more satisfactory nature, contenting himself with stating that she had retired, for the present, into the country, and had not hitherto furnished him with her address. From the Alderman's he betook himself to South Lambeth, but Mr. Ashmole was either as ignorant or as uncommunicative as his friend; and Jocelyn returned to Whitehall, more and more convinced, from the result of his inqui |