whether any of them were encamped there
or not. The son of the host of the White
Horse, young Tanner, who was at his elbow,
cocked a pistol, and ground out between his
teeth:—

"If he has lied, we'll shoot him!"

The Captain clapped the lad on the
shoulder, and said he was the very boy for the job.

"Take the Young Squire's horse," he said,
"and gallop to Eastwood and back as fast as
you can make it go."

The owner protested strongly against this
arrangement, and darted towards the horse
to prevent its being untied; but was
held back in the iron grasp of the Captain,
who said:

"No, no; we musn't trust turncoats out o' sight!"

In spite of sturdy resistance, the gentleman
was overpowered by numbers. The Captain
did not lose another minute, and ordered the
tithing men to tell off their gangs; for it
was getting near the appointed hour.

"Now's your time, or never!" he exclaimed
"Light up!"

A blazing furze branch was brought from
the kitchen-hearth. Each leader of ten men
lit his pitch and oakum torch, and moved
luridly amongst the crowd to pick out his own
followers. The gleaming banners spat and
crackled in the rain, shedding foggy rings
of light that hardly lessened the gloom. The
messenger, as he mounted the Squire's horse,
could not distinguish the van from the
rear of the little army; nor see in which
direction they were turning their faces. Above
the buzz of excitement and plashing of feet,
he heard the voice of the Captain—

"To the iron-works first; and then a man
and a gun from every house between this and
Nottingham! Look to your prisoner!"

"Prisoner!" repeated the scout, as he dug
his heels into the flanks of the grey gelding,
and galloped away through the murk: "the
Young Squire'll have a many fellow-prisoner
to keep company wi' him afore it's long.
Them that can fight, and won't fight, ought
to be made to fight."

THE WORLD OF INSECTS

And why should not insects have a world
of their own, just as well as you and I? Is
the Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's
Feast a bit more unreal than Almack's or
the Carlton? Don't grasshoppers feast?
don't they and their family connections, the
locusts, gormandise, and devour, and swallow
up everthing? Don't butterflies flutter, and
flirt, and perform the polka and the
varsovienne in the air, and display their fine
clothes with gratified vanity? Did no young
dragon-fly, with brilliant prospects, ever get
married to the horseleech's daughter, and
repent of the alliance after it was too late?
If philosophic fiction has created a Micromegas,
that is to say a Mr. Littlebig, romantic
natural history may surely record the
saying and doings of the Megamicroses, or
the Messieurs Biglittles. Vast souls often
dwell in undersized bodies. Neither
Napoleon nor the Duke could have earned sixpence
a-day by following the profession of giants at
fairs; nor would they have been cordially
received by the amateurs of calves in silks,
liveries, powdered heads, and six feet two.
They would have been found wanting when
compared with specimens of masculine beauty
who are hireable by addressing a prepaid
letter to P. Q. R., at Mrs. Mouldfusty's, greengrocer,
Outofplace Lane. Is not the succession
in an Oriental empire, and in a bee-hive,
regulated on exactly similar principles? The
reigning sovereign keeps the nearest heirs to
the throne imprisoned in palaces; now and
then murdering the most promising rivals.

To know the world of insects perfectly, one
must lead the life of an insect; one must be
an insect one's self. And therein lies the
great impediment to our knowledge. The
feelings and thoughts of animals not far removed
constitutionally from ourselves, we can guess
at intuitively. A novelist of genius, who has
closely observed human nature, is able to
assume mentally, the characteristics of the
leading varieties of mankind. A Thackeray,
a Balzac, a Moliere, a Shakspere, can be for a
time, murderers, misers, heartless worldlings,
weak hypochondriacs, ambitious prelates,
heart-broken parents, delicate-minded women.
Every phase of life is theirs to learn, to put
on, and to wear, as were they to the manor
born. In like manner, an observant naturalist
watches the habits and affections of his
favorites, till he can become one of themselves,
whenever need be. Audubon could
have acted the vulture, the humming-bird,
the passenger-pigeon, or the Canada goose,
to the life, when once he had been fitted with
the feather costume. Jules Gérard could
change himself into a perfect camel, hyena, or
lion, by an act of his will. Were Yarrel clad
in a herring's scales, he would never commit
the mistake of migrating annually from the
Arctic circle to the British coasts, as prated
of by Pennant; nor would he, disguised as a
goatsucker, ever dream of sucking goats. Do
you think than Ducrow didn't perfectly
understand every caprice of the horse, as well as
the horse himself did,—perhaps better? Is
not the person defective in intelligence and
sympathy who cannot thoroughly enter into
the feelings of a dog or an elephant? The
world of such creatures lies within the limits
of the world of men, though our world
extends considerably beyond the boundaries of theirs.

But the world of insects lies not on our
terrestrial map. Perhaps it may have a
closer relationship with life as it goes in the
planets Venus and Mercury, which, from
their nearer approach to the sun, may abound
with a gigantic insect population. We are