"Pardon me, ladies," he said; "I am a son of Mars, and therefore a slave to Venus."

Neither Mary Grey's dignified rebuke, nor the woman's tokens of mourning, saved her from the rudeness of the king's officer. As if she had been a mere serving wench in a barrack, he "chucked her under the chin, at the same time requesting his attendants to wait outside the house whilst he cross-examined these very interesting ladies.

Susan Chedzoy had crept within the shade of a tapestried recess whilst this scene was being enacted; but she watched the daring soldier with eyes that became fierce and fixed in the intensity of their gaze. "As a king's officer, my sweet lady," said the soldier, with a leer, endeavouring to seize Mary Grey's hand, "on my honour, I will make no search if you will favour me with a private interview."

"Out, vile traitor!" exclaimed Mrs. Donnington; "search, and leave the house; thy presence is an insult and a reproach to manhood." "Hoity, toity, mistress of the wrinkled cheek, thou shalt be soused in a horse-pond for a shrew," said the soldier.

Mrs. Donnington, nevertheless, stood fearlessly between the halftipsy scoundrel and Mary Grey.

"Stand aside, old woman," said the officer. have a kiss for one's leniency."

"At least one may

"Back, I say, back!" cried Mrs. Donnington, thrusting aside the outstretched hand of the intruder.

"No more of your nonsense," he said. "Get out of the way, old stupid!"

He thrust Mrs. Donnington aside, and approached Mary with outstretched arms, leering and tossing about his rough head, like a drunken ploughman at a fair. As he advanced, Susan Chedzoy, with cat-like crouching steps, stole from her corner, and all suddenly the officer's sword flashed in her tiny hands.

A cry of hatred from the girl's white lips, a yell of despair from the reeling libertine, and the king's officer lay writhing in the agonies of death at the feet of Mary Grey. Susan Chedzoy stood by, like an avenging angel, with a reeking blade, her eyes fixed upon the dying wretch, her teeth clenched, her whole frame rigid with her mighty effort of retribution.

The officer who thus fell ignominiously by his own sword was that treacherous scoundrel who received the fair messenger in Faversham's camp on the fatal night of Sedgemoor; the loyal but indiscreet girl who was so ill-requited for her loyalty was the unhappy but heroic Susan Chedzoy.

CHAPTER IV.

"It often falls in course of common life

That right is sometimes overborne of wrong ;

The avarice of power, or guile, or strife,

That weakens her, and makes her party strong;

But justice, though her doom she do prolong,

Yet at the last will make her own cause right."-Spenser.

"True love can no more be diminished by showers of evil hap, than flowers are marred by timely rains.”—Sir P. Sidney.

A TRAGIC incident, almost the same in every detail as that which is narrated in the previous chapter, did occur in the neighbourhood of Bridgewater during this unsettled period. Colonel Kirke, magnanimous for once, instead of dragging the girl who thus protected another from outrage and insult, presented her with the ruffian's sword, which has been preserved to this day, and is at the present moment in the possession of a female descendant of the heroine who received it from Colonel Kirke. But it is only right to say that this lady had not received the provocation of our Susan Chedzoy.

When the troopers re-entered the room and found their commander slain, they removed the body and conducted the three women before Colonel Kirke. It was hardly expected that they would be indulged even with the formal ceremony of a trial before condemnation. A court martial, however, was summoned. Susan Chedzoy confessed her crime. Mrs. Donnington and Mary Grey were charged with being accessories.

Meanwhile George Donnington, the dead leader of the Silken Banner, was alive, and living in the hope of speedily seeing his love. Bruised and maimed and mutilated, the brave yeoman was within easy distance of Bridgewater, watching for some circumstance that should enable him to assure Mary Grey of his safety. Fortune plays humanity strange tricks. Her vagaries entitle her to all the hard things that the proverbs of all countries hurl against her. What a transformation she had suddenly wrought in the relative positions of George and his dear friends! Mourned as dead, he is living. All he desires is to put his family out of the misery of fear concerning his safety; and they are in greater danger than himself. He is free, however much he is hurt. They are in the hands of the enemy, prisoners, not of war, but charged with murder, and murder of the darkest dye. The death of a king's officer was on their hands. They were in the most awful peril of their lives. It was well poor George remained in ignorance of their danger."

George Donnington's history, since the time when we suddenly missed him at Sedgemoor, may be briefly narrated. He had been left for dead on the field, and had lain for many hours bleeding and insensible, but still grasping the staff to which had been fastened the embroidered silk of the regiment. When he became sensible of his position it was early morning; the sun was shining brightly, and he was in the midst of a heap of dead. Looking cautiously around, he saw, peeping from the breast of a dead guardsman, a flask, to the contents of which, under Providence, he ascribed his final preservation. His dead enemy had brought his brandy-bottle into the fight Softened by the sight of the soldier's pale face, and moved by his own desperate plight, George had no scruples to combat in drinking that for which the royal soldier had no more use. Strengthened and refreshed, he began to think about escape; but finding that he could do nothing more than crawl, he determined to lie quiet until evening.

All day long, amongst that ghastly heap, the wounded hero lay, suffering the pangs of a living death, supported only by his faith in God's providence, his love for Mary Grey, and the dead trooper's brandy. It seemed as if he counted time by months, lying there, fearing the scrutiny of an occasional wanderer on the field, but fearing death the more. Night came at last; great piles of cloud gathered together at sundown, and took possession of the sky. There was not even a star to relieve the black monotony of the darkness. Through the night George crept along the field, dragging his aching limbs in pain and anguish. At the dawn he made out a friendly cottage at no great distance, and reached it before daybreak. A stack of straw was just being loaded for an adjacent roadside inn. When George's wounds had been hurriedly dressed, he was packed away, with his head and legs in bandages, beneath a couple of whisps of straw at the top of the cart. Successfully concealed at the ale-house for several days, he ventured upon his perilous journey, and on the evening when those three women, his dear friends, were being tried for their lives, he was in a coppice waiting for nightfall, determined to enter Bridgewater before the morning.

It would have gone hard with the prisoners, so dear to George Donnington, had not Colonel Kirke remembered Susan Chedzoy presenting herself at his dead comrade's tent with the news of the contemplated attack by Monmouth. Moreover, the Colonel and his colleagues disliked the dead officer, and they had dined heartily. It was a matter of general surprise, nevertheless, that the prisoners were all discharge 1.

Soon after the terrified women had returned home, hardly an hour after the guard had been recalled from the marked house, another soldier stood upon the threshold-a soldier whom Mary Grey did not repel, howsoever ragged and bandaged and bruised. The joy of that unexpected meeting when the widow embraced her son once more, and the lovers sat together, hand in hand, was only marred by the deep gloom that had settled down upon the blighted life of Susan Chedzoy. She would not be comforted; there was an indescribable sadness in her great blue eyes, which was only softened, as time wore on, by religious exercises.

George was safely concealed until long after the gibbets of Weston Zoyland had ceased to frighten the country people; and in due time he was married to Mary Grey. The bells did not ring at their wedding. Mary had no ear for such music after the peals which had announced the defeat of King Monmouth. On the day of their marriage Susan Chedzoy entered a convent, and in later years some of her English happiness seems to have come back to her. She had the reputation of being the loveliest and brightest and most charitable of the sisterhood to which she belonged.

All in good time the Donningtons increased and multiplied, and the story of Sedgemoor was often told round the winter's fire, at the Zoyland farm. The narrative was illustrated by a piece of torn and faded silk which George had brought from the battle-field in his bosom. The story-teller in those days was George himself, assisted by his buxom wife Mary. The audience chiefly consisted of young people who, as the years rolled by, repeated the story to their own children: hence its preservation until these peaceful days that give strength and glory to the throne of Queen Victoria.

BY ORDER OF THE KING.

(L'Homme qui Rit.)

A ROMANCE OF ENGLISH HISTORY: BY VICTOR HUGO.

PART II.-BOOK THE THIRD.

(Continued.)

CHAPTER III.

WHAT REASON COULD A GOLD PIECE HAVE TO LOWER ITSELF BY MIXING WITH A CROWD OF BIG PENNIES?

event happened.

Tadcaster Inn became more and more a furnace of joy and laughter. Never was there such resonant

gaiety. The landlord and his boy were insufficient to draw the ale, stout, and porter. In the evening the lower rooms had their windows all aglow, and not a table empty. They sang, they shouted; the grand old hearth, vaulted like an oven, with its iron bars piled with coals, shone out brightly. It was like a house of fire and of noise.

In the courtyard-that is to say, in the theatre-the crowd was greater still.

All the people that the suburb of Southwark could supply thronged in such a manner to the representation of "Chaos Vanquished," that so soon as the curtain was raised—that is to say, as soon as the platform of the Green Box was lowered-it was impossible to find a place. The windows were crammed with spectators, the balcony was crammed. It was impossible to see a single square of the paved court. All were replaced with faces.

Only the compartment for the nobility remained empty.

This made in this space, which was the centre of the balcony, a black hole, called, in metaphorical slang, an oven. No one there. A crowd everywhere excepting in that spot.

One evening there was someone.