parson had followed the hounds, but was now in the predicament of poor Reynard, who, while trotting home with a fat goose on his back, hears suddenly the deep baying of dogs. Affecting nonchalance, he quietly replied, "Give my respects to Squire Parks, if you should see him in London. I am sorry to turn off so fine a fellow on account of forgetting his place on one or two occasions ;" and resumed the newspaper, as if intimating that the audience was at an end. Then dropping it, he added, seemingly by a sudden thought, "As you are going down to London, just mention to Parks, before he engages you, that I can identify one of the men implicated in the robbery at the Bloomfields.

Hezekiah Pinch, a lover of gold above all things human or divine, had found in Dr. Bushwig a frequent borrower. Supposing that his succession to the earldom was inevitable the miser had loaned large sums already, the rates of interest being enormous. Unwilling, perhaps, that any others should have the picking of this golden-feathered bird, Pinch had dropped a remark like this: "Do you keep your platechest under sufficient lock at night, Doctor?" The rejoinder was in transatlantic fashion, with a query, "Is there any danger of robbery ?" This brought out the somewhat equivocal response, "What was your man doing on the night when the Bloomfields missed their plate?" Then, as if fearful of betraying too much, the usurer cautiously whispered, "This is between friends; I would not suspect

your man on any account."

Bushwig nursed the hint, and now flew it after John, much as a falconer casts off his hawk. The master and the man were players of equal skill; the game seemed a drawn one. The valet, if alarmed, did not betray fear, but, looking the Rector squarely in the face, with an air of dogged resolution, muttered, “Lawyer Parks offered me a thousand pounds if I could tell him the conversation that took place

the night that you had Jack Chivers in this room. I think of going to London, seeing him, and making a clean breast of it." Did Satan whisper in the false heart? Pausing a moment, that every word might take effect, he proceeded: "Trusty hinted in private that Chivers stole the girl the night he burned the coach-house."

This statement was in part false and in part true. It was not true that he had been offered a thousand pounds as a bribe, but the astute rogue was convinced that he could sell a thousand pounds worth of secrets to the attorney, provided it was possible to obtain access some night to the Rector's private papers.

Eyeing his man for a moment, the divine came to a rapid conclusion. Had the valet been possessed of any real secret, a liberal douceur would have purchased it before this; yet, doubtless, the man was working upon his fears from a vague suspicion. Taking the offensive, he rejoined: "It will not do, my man; it will not do. All transactions between Mr. Chivers and myself are at the service of the world. If you think to alarm me with the view of being bribed to keep a close mouth, you are simply making an enemy where you might have obtained a friend. If the gipsy is dead, as you remark, I regret to hear of his bloody end; but it was no more than could have been expected. Now, harkee! breathe one word affecting my character,-hint one suspicion that I instigated the abduction of which you speak, and to-night you sleep within the doors of the jail." With this the Rector, as if he were a judge on the bench pronouncing sentence, came to a pause.

He was now dealing with an adept in deceit. The thin varnish of decorum, acquired by contact with gentlemen, crackled and exhaled, while the aboriginal ruffian stood out, scowling, burly and defiant, answering: "Dr. Bushwig, which has the handle, and which takes the edge and point of the weapon, remains to be seen. My price is five thou

sand pounds, not a doit or stiver less." Now his eyes glared with unrestrained passion. "Do you think that I would have been dogged about the Rectory seven long years and more, if I had not expected to make it up out of the rich Earl in consideration for keeping the Earl's secrets? There is in London a man who writes to me a letter which, with your permission, I will read:

'Dear Jack: One Phil Bulwinkle, before Benbow died, which he did the next day, on a brig in the harbor, took the old man's papers, the ones that he filched from Chivers when the tent was burned, and started with them for the States. Joe followed, and on the Isthmus found means of getting at his leathern belt. You, being in the service of this Dr. Bushwig, will know better what they are worth than we do. One of them is a bond for ten thousand pounds, but there are letters besides. See what you can do with them for us, and mum's the word, if so be there's a secret.'"

Just make out a nice little

The valet added, "I have written back that they may expect me in a day or two. Now, Doctor, for five thou sand pounds I am your man. annuity of two hundred and fifty pounds a-year and you shall be put in possession of all the documents that Benbow took from Chivers. If you do not care to buy them,”—and now the ruffianly look which had receded came forth in full force-"why, then, I shall make the best of them in the market."

The bone-setter, nimble with the pen, had made his duplicate of the bond very nearly a fac-simile of the original. A poor laboring man by birth, young Bloomfield, seeing the fine mind and the quick and ready wit, had urged him, on departing, to apply himself to the common branches of education. The fingers, quick with all they undertook, mastered at once the mechanical difficulties in the art of writing. The honest man had beguiled a weary hour in

his stateroom on the steamer by engrossing the documents as neatly as could have been done by any lawyer's clerk.

As the valet finished the mind of the Rector was made up. Betraying no agitation he remarked quietly, "I have business in London the day after to-morrow. Bring these papers to my lodgings. It may be worth your while." As both now were scheming to circumvent each other they relapsed into the old relations: Dr. Bushwig was again the Rector, waited on with all obsequiousness by the Rector's gentleman.

In an interview, held at the time specified with the shrewd felon who had possessed himself of the documents, Dr. Bushwig was, or seemed to be, more successful than with his own servant, pointing out with a flourish that the bond, neither witnessed nor stamped, possessed no intrinsie value except as waste paper; showing too on inspecting the letters, that these were all in one handwriting and of no earthly use. Cunning Joe affected to be convinced, sullenly acquiesced in the Rector's logic and withdrew. After the door was closed, beckoning the servant near, he briefly observed, "I shall not discharge you, John. Get me the papers at once. They are worthless, but might as well be out of the way, and Oh!-consider the annuity arranged. One hour afterward the papers were burned.

CHAPTER XXIV.

MARIE DEVEREUX.

The loveliest women are those whose beauty is of slow growth. The mother of Charity Green, secluded for thirteen years within the walls of a convent, had become, unconsciously to herself, one of those superbly beautiful beings whom Titian and Giorgione loved to portray. A certain infantile softness and naivete combined with a languid melting look in her large eyes and a dreamy repose of manner, as if the mind were lost in the reveries of some delicious dream. A person ripened to the very perfection of charm, and a demeanor gliding now into the artlessness of a child and then into the grace of a queen, invested her with attributes, equally dangerous if misused, both to the young enthusiast inexperienced in the world's ways and to the cold and calculating disciple of Society and Fashion. Now but in her thirty-third year she bloomed anew in those stately circles of which she had been in youth one of the fairest of the fair. Marie had been beloved in the convent as if she were an angel; lingering so long in that twilight of the mind which cannot be called either sanity or delirium. Retaining there a passionate love of birds, flowers, music and the open air; free too, in consequence of that merciful closing of the natural memory, from her recollection of heart-break as Robert Devereux's misused wife, and from the harrowing griefs which followed little Rosa's abduction, she unfolded in that secluded place as if she were a tropical plant, which, first germinating in some northern latitude, where frosts