few minutes, when he again addressed Jocelyn: "Hey, Slapperloot! is 't mogelyk! I quite forgot the wine. What say you, Signor Lansridder, Sir Knight of the Lance? Merum adimit mœrorem ; so fill your glass. What shall it be? Cyprus, Canary, Rhenish, Malaga, Gascoigne, or this rare old Constantia from my vineyards at the Cape? I named my daughter after my own estate in that settlement, and the baggage is now dearer to me than all the estates in the colony; more heart-cheering than all the grape-juice that was ever quaffed from cup. Her gossip's posset was made of this very batch of wine, when she was christened; so we will e'en drink her health in it, now that the lapse of eighteen years has made the one a cordial, and the other a no, I must not say a beauty, but a grown maiden, and the darling of her father's heart."

He filled his glass at the conclusion of this speech, Jocelyn did the same, Miss Vanspaacken always took care of herself upon such occasions, and the whole party drank to the health of Constantia, who acknowledged their courtesy with a gracious smile, which appeared the more fascinating to Jocelyn, because it was so rarely seen to mantle upon her pensive countenance. Shortly after the repast, the Burgomaster, as it was the foreign-post-night, again betook himself to the counting-house, whence he did not return till a late hour, so that our hero enjoyed the society of Constantia during the whole

evening; a pleasure, however, that was not a little qualified by the jealous and inexorable presence of Miss Vanspaacken.

In a few days after he had thus been domiciliated in the Burgomaster's family, he received the following letter from Sir John, in answer to one he had written to him, explaining the causes of his sudden flight from England.

"Out upon thee! my dear boy, for a hot-headed ass, and a hasty!-what! the foul fiend! is't not enough to have a choleric old fool in the family, that thou must add a young one to the list, and take pepper in the nose about matters that concerned thee not? What a plague had the Queen's ViceChamberlain to do with the King's concubine, even had he presented a dozen of them to the Portuguese gypsey, black Katharine, who, I am told, is a dowdy, and is certainly a papist, and wouldn't mind another gunpowder plot, I dare say, if she met with a snug opportunity. 'Sblood, sir! has the country been ravaged with fire and sword for ten years together, to bring back Rowland; and is n't he to do as he likes, now we have got him,-and with his own Queen too? One would think you were as big a Roundhead as any of the crop-eared, red-coated saints; and yet you ought to remember the old royalist snatch I have often sung to you.

To drink sack and submit,
And not show our wit

By our prating, but silence and thinking,
And prove our obedience by drinking.'

"Had you attended to the last two lines, you luckless malapert! you might soon have been in such favour with Rowland, as to get the Brambletye estate restored, and the roguish Roundhead, that keeps me out of it, shipped off to the Barbadoes, of which I see no more chance now than I did when you left us.

66

By the by, we were very near nabbing the black ghost t' other night. Culpepper saw her squatting like a great black toad in the stone niche of one of the lodges, looking up at the towers, and spitting out anathemas and curses, as if she were possessed by Beelzebub. The fellow had heard so many stories about this Will-o'-the-whisp in black petticoats, that he was frightened and ran away. Indeed he swears that her eyes glared and sparkled in the dark like a couple of candles, while the hair upon her head bristled up, as he approached, like an angry boar's mane. Curse the slippery witch! if honest Jack Whittaker had been there, he would have seized her by the throat as a terrier does a weasel: and if I do not give her the witch's ordeal, when she is once caught, and drag her nine times round the moat, sink or swim, may I be nailed up against my own barn door for a scarecrow!

"Ods heart! my dear boy, Jocelyn! if things

go cross with thee, they go worse with thy fa-
ther. The gout still ties me by the leg, and this
damned Juffrouw Weegschaal, or Lady Compton,
as I suppose I must call her, baits and worries me
like a bear at a stake. I am sorry you have got
among such a set of pot-walloping, pinch-penny
skin-flints; but I don't think they 're so bad in their
own country. I have been trying to patch up a
truce, but we can't agree even about that.
are like the folks in the ballad-

'Come then let 's have peace, says Nell:
No, no, but we won't, says Nic:
But I say we will, says fiery-faced Phil
We will and we won't, says Dick.'

We

"Truly it's no laughing or singing matter, but sad and melancholy work, to be mewed up as I am in the moated house, with gouty feet, and a wife that threatens to starve me till I am as lank as a greyhound. Devil a guinea do I finger now-adays; and I suppose I shall be ultimately reduced to tipple swipes, like a ditcher or a swine-herd. Prythee, my dear boy, settle matters with the Court, come over, and see what thou canst do for me. I have got a bottle of claret to-day, in which I am now drinking your health; but I have no heart to write any more, for I have just finished the last glass so God bless you, my dear, choleric, illstarred, peppery, passionate, noble-hearted, ownown-own Jocelyn! These from father,

:

your

affectionate

JOHN COMPTON."

In a few days after this, he received also a letter from Tracy, stating that Bagot was still living, though considered to be in continual danger; and that, as it was now understood that Jocelyn had made his escape to Holland, the ardour of pursuit had relaxed, and the subject ceased to be much talked of at Court. In this despatch was an inclosure, which he perused with no little pride. It was an autograph letter of a few lines from the Queen, indited in French, and written on yellow paper, stamped with the royal arms of Portugal, bidding him.be of good cheer, since she would not fail to use her exertions for his re-appointment when the proper moment arrived, and signed-"Your friend -Katharine." This act of condescension Jocelyn mentioned with a justifiable vanity to his host's family, and even showed the communication to some visitants who happened to be dining at the Burgomaster's on the day that he received it.

Our hero had now abundant opportunity for observing the numerous virtues, and appreciating the exalted character, of Constantia. Cut off by an utter discrepancy of tastes, habits, and pursuits from all intimacy of communion with the boozing boors and smoking money-getters that occupied the upper sphere of society in the mercantile town of Rotterdam, her sympathies found a vent in the exercise of an almost unbounded charity towards the lower and more necessitous classes. To these pious offices she was impelled, not less by her reli