gland
could bestow, and now basely turned from the setting orb from which he
derived his borrowed splendour, to worship the rising sun; nay worse,
who attempted to alienate the duty of an amiable Prince from his sick
and aged father. Neville was earnest in his expressions of disgust at
such baseness; and the minions of the Duke did not suffer these hasty
ebullitions of virtue to die unreported. The sarcasms soon reached his
ear with magnified severity; and the ruin, or at least the removal of
his growing rival became necessary to his own security.

Chance favoured the Duke's designs. A gentleman in his suite was
assassinated in the streets of London when returning from a masquerade,
and the murderer was seen in the act of escaping, not so near the body
as that his person could be identified, but plain enough for the
beholders to ascertain that he wore the very dress in which Neville
appeared that evening. The implacable enemy he had indiscreetly provoked
possessed the royal ear; and though a jury could not have found in such
a coincidence sufficient grounds to indict Neville, the Duke easily
procured a royal warrant for his immediate arrest. "My own heart," here
observed Allan, "and my confidence in the justice and good sense of my
country, prompted me to brave my accusers; but I had now a convincing
proof that with all my acquirements I still wanted knowledge of the
world. I, however, possessed the invaluable blessing of a sincere, wise,
and prudent friend, one who reads man in his true characters, and deals
with him cautiously, instead of believing him to be the ingenuous
offspring of simplicity. In early youth this friend saved me from a
watery grave, and he is now the guardian of my fame and fortune. In
conformity to the advice of the kind Walter de Vallance (for that is his
name), I yielded to the storm; instead of resisting its fury, I chose
this retreat; and since my innocence as well as my guilt admitted not of
proof, I offered to submit the dubious question to the arbitration of
the sword, and called on Buckingham to meet me in single combat, or, if
he declined a personal engagement, to select any one of noble birth and
breeding for his proxy, who should accuse me as the author of Saville's
death. Walter de Vallance carried my proposal to the young King, who at
first yielded to my suit, but, on consulting his chaplains, judged this
to be an unlawful manner of deciding disputes in a Christian country. I
am now i