chance of fortune it could have happened that the unfortunate gentleman alluded to could possibly have been confided to the keeping of Jerry Clink.

"Why, as to that," replied Jerry, "I 've no particular objection to tell you, and then you 'll believe me; but mind, I shall go no farther. Don't inquire whether he is likely to be dead or alive next week,—where he is, or anything else about him. I clap that injunction on you beforehand. As to the other part of the business, it happened this way. If you 've any memory, you'll remember that night I jumped out o' the window at Kiddal Hall, when, but for your meddling, I should have brought down my game without twice loading. Well, I got into the woods safe enough; but, knowing the place would be a deal too hot to hold me for a while, I next day went clandestinely off into a different part of the country, in order to make safe. I partly changed my dress and name, and at last pitched my tent under a rock in a solitary part of Sherwood Forest, where I never saw a man, and no man saw me for weeks together. However, as I gathered ling for making besoms, and carried them about the surrounding country, I got to be pretty well known; and, amongst the rest, I fell in with a Mr. Rowel, who lived on the edge of the waste, and who behaved very well to me. Well, one day he came down to my rock-hole, and told me he wanted me to take a madman under my keeping, who had been brought to his house by his brother, and whom they wanted, for very particular reasons, to get out of the way. 'Well, well,' said I to him, 'bring him down: I care for neither a madman nor the devil, and can manage either when occasion calls. They accordingly brought him, tied hand and foot and blindfolded, pitched him into my place, and there I have had him ever since, and been well paid for my trouble, or else I should not have been here. However, when the man himself told me his story, I found he was not more mad, perhaps, than those that sent him; and so, as your mother had told me all about your part of the affair besides,—for she knew where I was gone to,—I thought it a fair chance for making you do as a son ought to do, and revenging her dishonour, when, perhaps, it did not lie so conveniently in my power. But I am deceived in you altogether; and sooner than I 'll ask anybody else again to do my business, may I be sunk to the lowest pit of perdition! No, may I—"

"Say no more," observed Colin, interrupting him, "but just answer me this—"

"Mind," said Jerry, "I clapped an injunction on you."

"Very well," remarked Colin; "I 'll ask no questions."

But he reflected within himself that the place of Jerry's abode would now be no difficult thing to discover, and that, with a convenient force and quiet management, it might readily be surprised, and Woodruff's liberation be effected.

One thing more only did he now wish to be made acquainted with, for on that depended the course he should at the present moment adopt with respect to old Jerry himself. He wished to ascertain whether it was the old man's intention to remain and lurk about the town, seeking opportunities for gratifying his revenge, or to return at once to the place whence he had come.

"I shall not stay here," replied Jerry, "for I can trust none of you; but some time, when least it is expected, Mr. Lupton will find me by his side."

Trusting to put Mr. Lupton effectually on his guard against immediate danger, and hoping by his future proceedings ultimately to avert that danger altogether, without any appeal to legal protection or to violence, Colin concluded not to molest the old man at present.

Thus, then, he parted with Jerry, forming in his own mind, as he returned townwards, a very ingenious scheme for countermining all the plans of which Rowel and his brother had made Jerry Clink the instrument and depositary.

CHAPTER II.

In which Mr. Lupton explains to Colin the story of himself and his lady.

WHEN next Colin Clink met his father the Squire, it was under the influence of such feelings of embarrassment as scarcely left him at liberty to speak; while Mr. Lupton, on his part, received him with that quiet melancholy, though unembarrassed air, which marked emphatically a man upon whom the force of unhappy and unusual circumstances has produced a subdued, though lasting, sense of dejection.

"For some time past," said he, taking Colin's hand, and conducting him to a chair,—"for some time past, my boy, I have felt that one day or other it must come to this. Ever since the time when Providence so singularly threw it in your power to save me from a violent end,—and from such a hand too!—I have been a changed man. By that event Heaven seemed to lay, as it were, a palpable finger upon my soul, the dint of which is everlasting. That from such retributive justice, if justice it could be called, I should have been so saved by one whose very existence itself had called that justice into action, appears to me like a marvellous lesson, in which Providence intended at once to admonish me of my criminality, and at the same time to remind me of its mercy."

Mr. Lupton here covered his eyes with his hand. In a few minutes he thus continued,—"From that moment I foresaw that, sooner or later, you must know all. Now you do know all; and that knowledge has come to you in such a shape, as to render any farther allusion to it needless. The subject is at best a painful one to us both, but most especially so to me; although I once held such things lightly, and as matter for pleasantry and joke. I now acknowledge you as my son; and I confess that a proud, though painful, time it is, now I can do so face to face. Save in yours and my own, the blood of an ancient and honourable family runs in no human veins. You are grown to manhood, and the circumstances which Providence has brought about enable me to address you thus without impropriety. But you must be told, my boy, that I was the last, the very last of all my race. My father knew it; he lamented over it; but he cherished and guarded me because of it, as though the world contained for him no other treasure. I knew it too; I grew up, as I may say, side by side with that fatal knowledge. With our ideas of long descents, and ancient honourable lines, it is the bitterest thought in a man's breast to think that here the stream must stop; that in this one body it is lost, and the sun shall shine upon its name no longer. Anxiety for my life and welfare helped to bring my father to the grave earlier than otherwise nature would have called him, and he died while yet I was very young. But before he died he bound me, on attaining my twenty-first year, to marry one of the members of an opulent and numerous family, which had long enjoyed his esteem. I did so, and the lady he had selected became my wife. There were circumstances between Mrs. Lupton and myself which need not be explained, but which, while they made her deem herself most unhappy in her fate, left me not a whit less so in opinion of mine. It is sufficient that I say, years passed on, and I was still the last. Beyond this I need not go. In you, my boy, in you—but no, that need not to be said, either. Only this I will and must say, that, under circumstances which the world superficially may deem highly criminal, there may be hidden causes, and feelings, and springs of action, which no heart knows but his that contains them, and which, through the force of perhaps erroneous notions and education from our youth, have become individually equally strong with right principles, and may therefore possibly be in some sort received in palliation."

Colin was very materially concerned during, and affected at the conclusion of, the above speech; although the author himself of this faithful history cannot refrain from expressing his opinion, that its tenor and tendency seem somewhat