r, in allowing her the privilege of
her own will. Who would have thought it? But the colt has slipped the
bridle, and I must needs follow, since I cannot guide her."

Our narrative returns to the Court of King Charles at Whitehall.

CHAPTER XLVIII

----But oh!
What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop; thou cruel,
Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature!
Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,
That knew'st the very bottom of my soul,
That almost mightst have coined me into gold,
Wouldst thou have practised on me for thy use?
--HENRY V.

At no period of his life, not even when that life was in imminent
danger, did the constitutional gaiety of Charles seem more overclouded,
than when waiting for the return of Chiffinch with the Duke of
Buckingham. His mind revolted at the idea, that the person to whom he
had been so particularly indulgent, and whom he had selected as the
friend of his lighter hours and amusements, should prove capable of
having tampered with a plot apparently directed against his liberty
and life. He more than once examined the dwarf anew, but could extract
nothing more than his first narrative contained. The apparition of the
female to him in the cell of Newgate, he described in such fanciful and
romantic colours, that the King could not help thinking the poor man's
head a little turned; and, as nothing was found in the kettledrum, and
other musical instruments brought for the use of the Duke's band of
foreigners, he nourished some slight hope that the whole plan might be
either a mere jest, or that the idea of an actual conspiracy was founded
in mistake.

The persons who had been despatched to watch the motions of Mr. Weiver's
congregation, brought back word that they had quietly dispersed. It was
known, at the same time, that they had met in arms, but this augured
no particular design of aggression, at a time when all true Protestants
conceived themselves in danger of immediate massacre; when the fathers
of the city had repeatedly called out the Train-Bands, and alarmed the
citizens of London, under the idea of an instant insurrection of the
Catholics; and when, to sum the whole up, in the emphatic words of an
alderman of the day, there was a general belief that they would all
waken some unhappy morning with their throats cut. Who was to do