perform, and the others to
attend, at the ceremony.

"Sir. Strong and ladies," said he, with looks of great distraction, "I
fear there will be no marriage here to-day. An accident, I believe, has
happened to Sir Robert Whitecraft that will prevent his being a party in
the ceremony, for this day at least."

"An accident!" exclaimed the ladies and the clergyman. "Pray, Mr.
Folliard, what is it? how did it happen?"

"I am just going to ride over to Sir Robert's to learn everything about
it," he replied; "I will be but a short time absent. But now!" he added,
"here's his butler, and I will get everything from him. Oh, Thomas, is
this you? follow me to my study, Thomas."

As the reader already knows all that Thomas could tell him, it is only
necessary to say that he returned to the drawing-room with a sad and
melancholy aspect.

"There is no use," said he, addressing them, "in concealing what will
soon be known to the world. Sir Robert Whitecraft has been arrested on a
charge of murder and arson, and is now a prisoner in the county jail."

This was startling intelligence to them all, especially to the parson,
who found that the hangman was likely to cut him out of his fees.
The ladies screamed, and said, "it was a shocking thing to have that
delightful man hanged;" and then asked if the bride-elect had heard it.

"She has heard it," replied her father, "and I have just left her in
tears; but upon my soul, I don't think there is one of them shed for
him. Well, Mr. Strong, I believe, after all, there is likely to be no
marriage, but that is not your fault; you came here to do your duty, and
I think it only just--a word with you in the next apartment," he added,
and then led the way to the dining-room. "I was about to say, Mr.
Strong, that it would be neither just nor reasonable to deprive you of
your fees; here is a ten-pound note, and it would have been twenty had
the marriage taken place. I must go to Sligo to see the unfortunate
baronet, and say what can be done for him--that is, if anything can,
which I greatly doubt."

The parson protested, against the receipt of the ten-pound note very
much in the style of a bashful schoolboy, who pretends to refuse an
apple from a strange relation when he comes to pay a visit, whilst, at
the same time, the young monkey's chops are watering for it. With some
faint show of reluctance he at length received it, and need we say that
it soon disappeared in one of his sanctified pocke