e acquaintance of Charles Archer, to find him out,
and catch their Tartar how they may.'

CHAPTER LXXVI.

RELATING HOW THE CASTLE WAS TAKEN, AND HOW MISTRESS MOGGY TOOK HEART OF
GRACE.

That evening there came to the door of the Mills, a damsel, with a wide
basket on her arm, the covering of which being removed, a goodly show of
laces, caps, fans, wash-balls, buckles, and other attractions, came out
like a parterre of flowers, with such a glow as dazzled the eyes of
Moggy, at the study window.

'Would you plaze to want any, my lady?' enquired the pedlar.

Moggy thought they were, perhaps, a little bit too fine for her purse,
but she could not forbear longing and looking, and asking the prices of
this bit of finery and that, at the window; and she called Betty, and
the two maids conned over the whole contents of the basket.

At last she made an offer for an irresistible stay-hook of pinchbeck,
set with half-a-dozen resplendent jewels of cut glass, and after
considerable chaffering, and a keen encounter of their wits, they came
at last to terms, and Moggy ran out to the kitchen for her money, which
lay in a brass snuff-box, in a pewter goblet, on the dresser.

As she was counting her coin, and putting back what she did not want,
the latch of the kitchen door was lifted from without, and the door
itself pushed and shaken. Though the last red gleam of a stormy sunset
was glittering among the ivy leaves round the kitchen window, the
terrors of last night's apparition were revived in a moment, and, with a
blanched face, she gazed on the door, expecting, breathlessly, what
would come.

The door was bolted and locked on the inside, in accordance with Doctor
Toole's solemn injunction; and there was no attempt to use violence. But
a brisk knocking began thereat and Moggy, encouraged by hearing the
voices of Betty and the vender of splendours at the little parlour
window, and also by the amber sunlight on the rustling ivy leaves, and
the loud evening gossip of the sparrows, took heart of grace, and
demanded shrilly--

'Who's there?'

A whining beggar's voice asked admission.

'But you can't come in, for the house is shut up for the night, replied
the cook.

''Tis a quare hour you lock your doors at,' said the besieger.

'Mighty quare, but so it is,' she answered.

'But 'tis a message for the misthress I have,' answered the applicant.

'Who from?' demanded the porteress.

''Tis a present o' some wine, a