the Life Guards—that he went, over head
and ears, for Charles Edward Stuart?

When Culloden had been fought, and the
Prince was hiding, and the proscription came,
a troop of Morrishes regiment of dragoons
(the yellow horse) came to Bridgemoor.
The name and character of the widow of
Squire Gabion stood so high, she was so
beloved far and near for her meekness and
goodness, that her house, until the date of
the commencement of this story, had been
left sacred. But a strict watch was kept on
her and hers.

The Lady Earnest had been, for nearly a
score of years, in the habit of receiving, in
the great oak parlour of Gabion Place, every
night in the week save Sunday, the principal
inhabitants of Bridgemoor. They ate and
drank nothing, save on stated occasions, for
which special invitations were issued; but
the ladies brought their needlework, and the
men played at a very solemn and intricate
game called Trictrac. Two circumstances
may have induced the Lady Earnest to hold
these very frequent réunions. In the first
place, there was no family in Bridgemoor of
sufficient rank to admit of her visiting them;
in the next, she had been educated abroad,
where it is the custom for the principal lady
in a provincial town to "receive" six times
a week. So, night after night, winter and
summer, there assembled in the great oak
parlour Doctor Boyfus the Esculapius of
Bridgemoor, (sometimes Mrs. Boyfus,) and
Mr. Tappan the solicitor; the three Miss
Tappans, his elderly sisters (very assiduous
in their attendance), Captain Limberup, who
had been with the Duke at the battle of
Hochstadt; one Mr. Paul, who had formerly
dealt in druggets at Leeds, and was,
consequently, somewhat looked down upon; but
who was so devout a Catholic, so warm a
Jacobite, and so good a man, that he had
been admitted on a sort of good-humoured
sufferance for full ten years as an honorary
member of the Gabion coterie. Mrs. Vanderpant,
whose husband, a Dutch sea captain, had
been summarily shot by William the Third
for tampering with the adherents of the
Pretender, closes the list of the regular
frequenters of the oak parlour. The rector of
the parish, Doctor Small, came but seldom;
he was a Low Church man, and was very
much occupied with the composition of a
folio refutation of Bentley's Phalaris. A
non-juring archdeacon of the Protestant
persuasion (very much put to his shifts, and forced
to earn his bread as a travelling tutor)
dropped in occasionally; but he talked too
much about Doctor Sacheverell, all of whose
sermons he had by heart, and quarrelled too,
with Father Maziere, the Irish Benedictine
chaplain and tutor, whom I have not mentioned
hitherto as one of the circle, he being
as much an article of household furniture,
as the great, long-backed arm-chairs or the
trictrac board. Many a summer and winter's
day had past and gone since young Squire
Gervase had put his foot across his own
threshold. In his place there came another
visitor, unwelcome, though not unbidden;
dreaded, yet nightly expected; courted, but
hated and feared. This was Captain Seagreest,
the commander of the troop of horse
stationed at Bridgemoor. He was the Fate
of the town, he held the strings of life and
death; he could hang all Bridgemoor, so they
said, as high as Haman, if he chose, in half
an hour.

On a certain cold Thursday evening in
November, 1746, Lady Gabion had determined
to close her doors to her entire circle of visitors,
as she had closed them on the preceding
Tuesday and Wednesday. The existence,
almost cloistral, led by those who dwell in
small towns, creates in them a species of
habit of analysing and explaining—to their
own satisfaction at least—the minutest actions
of their neighbours. All Bridgemoor was
agog for the two days, and for a considerable
portion of the two nights, to find a solution
for Lady Gabion's seemingly inexplicable
conduct.

On Thursday morning, after the reception
by old Mr. Paul of a missive from the Lady
Gabion, intimating her renewed inability to
receive that evening, and begging him to
communicate her apologies to her visitors in
collective, public curiosity reached the boiling
point, and well nigh boiled over. With this
curiosity began to be mingled alarm, not for
the health of Lady Gabion, but for her life.
At twelve o'clock in the forenoon, old Mr.
Paul, walking on the High Street, was smartly
tapped on the shoulder by a tall man with a
black campaigning wig, a scarlet coat, a
grizzled moustache, an evil-minded cocked
hat, cruel eyes, a great gash across the left
cheek, a trailing sabre, and jack-boots with
long brass spurs. Mr. Paul, a venerable man, of
full seventy years, with flowing white hair and
an infirm gait, trembled violently when he felt
the hand of captain Seagreest on his shoulder,
and when, turning round, he found himself
face to face with that horrible trooper.

"I know what's going on up yonder," was
the greeting of the dragoon.

"Know, captain?" faltered out Paul.

"Ay," responded his interlocutor, with
an oath, "and so do you, you infernal
Jacobitical old rag pedlar. I've watched the
crew at the Place. I know their game, and
I'll spoil it too. The old Cumberland witch,
Bridget," he continued, "was in the market,
almost before daylight this morning, and
bought eggs: the Gabion woman never eats
eggs. She bought fowls: the Gabion woman
never eats poultry. As I passed this morning
after parade, I found the second window on
the first floor of the left wing had been cleaned,
and fresh curtained. I know who sleeps
there when he is at home; and you know,
too, you whining Popish hunks."

He struck the old man, sportively it may