d commissions for this
purpose, which were only to be produced in case of their scheme taking
effect.

It miscarried, as the reader is aware, from the Countess's alert
preparations for defence; and neither Christian nor Bridgenorth held
it sound policy to practise openly, even under parliamentary authority,
against a lady so little liable to hesitate upon the measures most
likely to secure her feudal sovereignty; wisely considering that
even the omnipotence, as it has been somewhat too largely styled, of
Parliament, might fail to relieve them from the personal consequences of
a failure.

On the continent of Britain, however, no opposition was to be feared;
and so well was Christian acquainted with all the motions in the
interior of the Countess's little court, or household, that Peveril
would have been arrested the instant he set foot on shore, but for the
gale of wind which obliged the vessel, in which he was a passenger,
to run for Liverpool. Here Christian, under the name of Ganlesse,
unexpectedly met with him, and preserved him from the fangs of the
well-breathed witnesses of the Plot, with the purpose of securing his
despatches, or, if necessary, his person also, in such a manner as to
place him at his own discretion--a narrow and perilous game, which
he thought it better, however, to undertake, than to permit these
subordinate agents, who were always ready to mutiny against all in
league with them, to obtain the credit which they must have done by
the seizure of the Countess of Derby's despatches. It was, besides,
essential to Buckingham's schemes that these should not pass into the
hands of a public officer like Topham, who, however pompous and stupid,
was upright and well-intentioned, until they had undergone the revisal
of a private committee, where something might have probably been
suppressed, even supposing that nothing had been added. In short,
Christian, in carrying on his own separate and peculiar intrigue, by the
agency of the Great Popish Plot, as it was called, acted just like an
engineer, who derives the principle of motion which turns his machinery,
by means of a steam-engine, or large water-wheel, constructed to drive
a separate and larger engine. Accordingly, he was determined that, while
he took all the advantage he could from their supposed discoveries,
no one should be admitted to tamper or interfere with his own plans of
profit and revenge.

Chiffinch, who, desirous of satisfying himself wi