ce and common feeling, what brings you to this house
so frequently? You have dispossessed the family, whose property it is,
of it, and you have caused great confusion and dismay over a whole
county. I implore you now, not in the language of menace or as an enemy,
but as the advocate of the oppressed, and one who desires to see justice
done to all, to tell me what it is you require."

"There is no time now for explanation," said Varney, "if explanations
were my full and free intent. You wished to know what noise was that you
heard?"

"I did; can you inform me?"--"I can. The wild and lawless mob which you
and your friends first induced to interfere in affairs far beyond their
or your control, are now flushed with the desire of riot and of plunder.
The noise you hear is that of their advancing footsteps; they come to
destroy Bannerworth Hall."

"Can that be possible? The Bannerworth family are the sufferers from all
that has happened, and not the inflictors of suffering."--"Ay, be it so;
but he who once raises a mob has raised an evil spirit, which, in the
majority of cases, it requires a far more potent spell than he is master
of to quell again."

"It is so. That is a melancholy truth; but you address me, Sir Francis
Varney, as if I led on the mob, when in reality I have done all that lay
in my power, from the very first moment of their rising on account of
this affair, which, in the first instance, was your work, to prevent
them from proceeding to acts of violence."--"It may be so; but if you
have now any regard for your own safety you will quit this place. It
will too soon become the scene of a bloody contention. A large party of
dragoons are even now by another route coming towards it, and it will be
their duty to resist the aggressions of the mob; then should the rioters
persevere, you can guess the result."--"I can, indeed."

"Retire then while you may, and against the bad deeds of Sir Francis
Varney at all events place some of his good ones, that he may not seem
wholly without one redeeming trait."--"I am not accustomed," said the
doctor, "to paint the devil blacker than he really is; but yet the cruel
persecutions that the Bannerworth family have endured call aloud for
justice. You still, with a perseverance which shows you regardless of
what others suffer so that you compass your own ends, hover round a spot
which you have rendered desolate."

"Hark, sir; do you not hear the tramp of horses' feet?"--"I do."