of war. Whence this report arose he could never discover. No sooner did
it reach the ears of the soldiers, than they were on the alert. Luckily,
Israel was apprised of their intentions in time. But he was hard pushed.
He was hunted after with a perseverance worthy a less ignoble cause. He
had many hairbreadth escapes. Most assuredly he would have been
captured, had it not been for the secret good offices of a few
individuals, who, perhaps, were not unfriendly to the American side of
the question, though they durst not avow it.

Tracked one night by the soldiers to the house of one of these friends,
in whose garret he was concealed, he was obliged to force the skuttle,
and running along the roof, passed to those of adjoining houses to the
number of ten or twelve, finally succeeding in making his escape.

CHAPTER V.

ISRAEL IN THE LION'S DEN.

Harassed day and night, hunted from food and sleep, driven from hole to
hole like a fox in the woods, with no chance to earn an hour's wages, he
was at last advised by one whose sincerity he could not doubt, to apply,
on the good word of Sir John Millet, for a berth as laborer in the
King's Gardens at Kew. There, it was said, he would be entirely safe, as
no soldier durst approach those premises to molest any soul therein
employed. It struck the poor exile as curious, that the very den of the
British lion, the private grounds of the British King, should be
commended to a refugee as his securest asylum.

His nativity carefully concealed, and being personally introduced to the
chief gardener by one who well knew him; armed, too, with a line from
Sir John, and recommended by his introducer as uncommonly expert at
horticulture; Israel was soon installed as keeper of certain less
private plants and walks of the park.

It was here, to one of his near country retreats, that, coming from
perplexities of state--leaving far behind him the dingy old bricks of
St. James--George the Third was wont to walk up and down beneath the
long arbors formed by the interlockings of lofty trees.

More than once, raking the gravel, Israel through intervening foliage
would catch peeps in some private but parallel walk, of that lonely
figure, not more shadowy with overhanging leaves than with the shade of
royal meditations.

Unauthorized and abhorrent thoughts will sometimes invade the best human
heart. Seeing the monarch unguarded before him; remembering that the war
was imputed more to the