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the bride and bridegroom elect, who returned tête-àtête to Lavender Lane, to arrange all farther preliminaries; the first of which was to write to a Mrs. Crump, the proprietor of furnished apartments in Birmingham, to secure them on the wedding-day, Mr. Hoskins having business in that town, and not liking, at the first onset, to frighten his bride by the extravagance of going to a hotel.

All unnecessary delays he had carefully avoided, by having taken the precaution to get Mr. Tymmons to draw up the marriage-settlements in advance, leaving certain interstices to be filled up with whatever stipulations he might be able to extort from Miss MacScrew, or she should insist upon from him.

And now we will leave Miss MacScrew to prepare her bridal rags, and Peter to spend her money in imagination, while we pay a visit to Mrs. Stokes, and find out what has happened in Blichingly since we were last there. Cheveley had that morning accidentally gone to Blichingly church, not in the least aware of Mr. Hoskins's intended disgraceful exhibition, nor could he participate in the excessive mirth it occasioned, as he felt how much religion was outraged and decency violated by such an indecorous proceeding, and thought Mr. Hoskins deserved to be stripped of his gown.

Having ordered the carriage to put up at "The De Clifford Arms," according to the promise he had made Mrs. Stokes in Lee's cottage, he had given orders that it should remain there, and he would walk on to the inn, for Cheveley had an innate love for English villages, and never felt less unhappy than when he was exploring them.

When he arrived at the De Clifford Arms, Richard Brindal was sitting on a bench outside the door, with a pipe in his mouth, a pot of porter beside him, and the "Triverton Independent" in his hand, which he was spelling over to himself aloud. "The old story," muttered he, as Cheveley entered the inn; "nothing but jails and gibbets for the poor, and yet they tell us a deal about liberty at the lections; the liberty o' scragging us poor folks, I spose they means.

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But where was Mrs. Stokes? The day that she had so long wished for, hoped for, dreamed of, had at length arrived. Lord Cheveley's horses stood in her stable, his carriage in her yard, and himself in her house; then VOL. II.-T

where was she? Why, in a very unusual place, and occupied in a very unusual manner, with her arms round her husband's neck, sobbing upon his shoulder. When Cheveley stood before them, John Stokes perpetrated sundry bows, his right foot moving to and fro like the pendulum of a clock, and propping his wife up to the right till she regained a perpendicular position, he whispered, "My dear, the marcus."

But even these magic words produced no greater effect than to make Mrs. Stokes dry her eyes hurriedly, with the corner of her apron, and exclaim, wringing her hands passionately,

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My lord, they no more took the things than you did; it's all a piece of wickedness to ruin them. Try, try, for Heaven's sake! my lord, to get them righted.

"Get who righted?" asked Cheveley. "I'm sorry to see you so distressed; but let me know the cause of it, and perhaps I may serve you.”

"There, Nancy, don't take on so; you hear his lordship's goodness: sit down, and I'll tell him the rights on it. You must know, my lord," continued Stokes, "that last Monday Lord de Clifford and the old lady came down to the Park, and there was a great many different workpeople, masons, carpenters, and such-like, had up there to do odd jobs about the place. Among others, old Lee was sent for to do something to a window-frame in Mrs. Frump's room: this made him very angry, and he went himself up to Mr. Grindall at the Park, and told him that never, as long as he lived, would he handle a hammer for Lord de Clifford or his mother, unless it was to knock a nail in their coffins, and that he'd do with pleasure. Grindall called him an impertinent old rascal, and told him never to come near the place again. Now your lordship will please to observe, that it was in the audit-room this took place, and the audit-room is at the foot of the back stairs leading to Mrs. Frump's room. Well, the next day there was a hue and cry over all the place, that a watch of the old lady's, and two diamond shirt-buttons of my lord's, had been stolen out of Mrs. Frump's room, where all my lord's and lady's things were laying at sixes and sevens, half unpacked. Grindall instantly procured a searchwarrant, and not only all the houses of the workpeople, but every house in the village, not excepting mine, was ransacked for the lost things: but, not to keep your

lordship too long, I'm now coming to the upshot of the story. My missus was drinking tea with Mary Lee last Thursday evening; she was sitting at work, and the old man was reading, when the officers, with Grindall at their head, walked into the cottage. Lee had heard of the other houses being searched, and, therefore, was not surprised at seeing them; but, without so much as looking at Grindall, rose up, and civilly gave all his keys to the officers, telling Mary to leave the room; but she only stood the nearer to her father, while the child clung to her as if it was frightened, but never said one word, though it looked every now and then from behind its mother at the strange men. Nancy says it was

enough to turn a stone to down. Well, they searched the whole house, and nothing could they find; but when they were going away, 'You have forgotten to look in the old walnut-tree desk, that I keep my bills in,' said Lee; at this Grindall sprung forward, but Lee pushed him back, saying, 'he should not lay a finger on anything belonging to him:' in doing this, Grindall's foot slipped, and he fell with his head against the leg of a table, but was not much hurt, though he threatened to have the law of Lee for what he called an assault; but even the officers declared that there had been no such thing, and then went on to open the desk; when, turning everything out, what should they find but the watch and the diamond buttons! at which no one looked surprised but Nancy and Lee himself, but he more than her; for he seemed as if the sight on 'em turned him to stone. Mary looked wild-like for a few minutes, but suddenly flashing, as she does, poor thing! when she gets one of her mad fits, she broke from the child's arm, and seizing Grindall's arm, she shrieked out, 'It's all a vile, vile plot; but he shall not ruin my poor old father as he has ruined me; he never took the things. If he must say, and will have it that they were brought here by any of us, it was I that stole them. Drag me to prison then, or where you please, but touch him on your peril;' and poor Mary sank on the ground and clasped her father's feet. But Grindall's fit for his work; for he answered her with a sneer, 'No, no, miss, we ain't going to part ye; you shall both have the same privileges, and be comfortably lodged in Triverton jail together.'

"So, to make a long story short, my lord, the poor

old man, his daughter, and grandchild, were that very night taken to prison, where they are all likely to lie for the next three months, till the 'sizes come on. And my firm belief is," concluded Stokes, striking the table with his clinched hand, "that Lee no more stole the things than I did."

"No, nor than his lordship did," sobbed Mrs. Stokes. "Then who do you suppose was wicked enough to place the things in Lee's desk?" asked Cheveley.

"The devil, or some one as bad, my lord, I should say," replied Stokes.

"I never thought downright bad of Lord de Clifford till now," said Mrs. Stokes; "but, God forgive me! I can't help thinking, with poor Mary, that it's all a diabolical plot of his to get them out of the way."

"I should hope," said Cheveley, "that he was incapable of such wickedness, and that the mystery-for mystery there evidently is-will soon be solved, to the clearing of those poor Lee's characters as well as his. But one thing I don't comprehend, how it was that Mary Lee fell a victim to Lord de Clifford's arts; for surely his personal appearance must have been too well known at Blichingly not to have been recognised through the trifling disguise of a mere change of dress."

"No, there it is, my lord," said Stokes; "he never was here since he had been a very little child till that time he first saw poor Mary. None of us knew his appearance; for he used to go all about the village in that farmer's dress, and even come and smoke in our bar; and 'twas not till just before he went abroad that I saw him as Lord de Clifford, and thought I never saw such a likeness in all my life to William Dale! but till I saw his letters to Mary, signed William Dale, and compared them with those to me signed De Clifford, I never could believe that they were one and the same person.

But I never knew a good Grimstone yet; they're like the foxes' cubs, there's not a best among them."

"Poor people!" said Cheveley, musingly; "what prison did you say they were in ?"

"Triverton, my lord."

"Well, have the goodness to order my carriage; I'll see if anything can be done for them."

"God bless you for that, my lord," said Mrs. Stokes, "and for what you have already done for them."

As soon as the carriage was ready, Cheveley depart

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ed, bidding Mrs. Stokes keep up her spirits, as he was sure that God would not long allow the innocent to suffer for the guilty; and of the innocence of the Lee's he did not entertain the least doubt.

"How many there are in this world," thought Cheveley, as the carriage rolled on to Triverton, "who upon circumstantial evidence would be ready to condemn this poor old man and his daughter, never recollecting that misfortunes are like mice; and that, where one has crept in, hundreds are sure to follow: for in the moral as in the material world,

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The great first' cause is always 'least understood.'

"Mary Lee, from having been betrayed by the machinations of a heartless profligate, is, of course, looked upon by the discriminating portion of society as capable of anything and everything, while the author of her misery struts unsuspected and uncensured through the world. Her father, being deserted and shunned, on the strength of his daughter's seeming dereliction from virtue, by all who had been his companions, receives kindness from none but gipsies and outcasts; consequently, as evil communications proverbially corrupt good manners, he must, of necessity, have degenerated into a thief and a felon! Oh, world! world! how weary I am of your false judgments; your envy, malice, hatred, and uncharitableness; your hollowness and your hypocrisy ; your fair words and your foul deeds; your ovations to the strong and your oppressions to the weak; your libellous defamations of the unprotected and your lying defences of the powerful. If this be human nature, I'd rather be a dog and beg to it, than be a man and bear it."

Here the carriage stopped before the door of the town-hall at Triverton, which was at the opposite side of the market-place to the jail, which stood near the abbey, into which well-dressed and happy-looking people of all ages were flocking to three-o'clock prayers. Cheveley got out and walked across to the prison, whose high and ponderous walls seemed saturated with gloom beyond the power of the summer sun and balmy air to dissipate. In answer to Cheveley's knock, the door turned slowly on its hinges, and the porter inquired his business.

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