ide yourself--"

"I was beside myself to take charge of your--"

"Mother?" interposed Winifred.

"It's of no use," observed Thames quietly, but with a look that chilled
the little damsel's heart;--"my resolution is taken."

"You at least appear to forget that Mr. Kneebone is coming, my dear,"
ventured Mr. Wood.

"Good gracious! so I do," exclaimed his amiable consort. "But you _do_
agitate me so much. Come into the parlour, Winifred, and dry your eyes
directly, or I'll send you to bed. Mr. Wood, I desire you'll put on your
best things, and join us as soon as possible. Thames, you needn't tidy
yourself, as you've hurt your arm. Mr. Kneebone will excuse you. Dear
me! if there isn't his knock. Oh! I'm in such a fluster!"

Upon which, she snatched up her fan, cast a look into the glass,
smoothed down her scarf, threw a soft expression into her features, and
led the way into the next room, whither she was followed by her daughter
and Thames Darrell.

CHAPTER III.

The Jacobite.

Mr. William Kneebone was a woollen-draper of "credit and renown," whose
place of business was held at the sign of the Angel (for, in those
days, every shop had its sign), opposite Saint Clement's church in the
Strand. A native of Manchester, he was the son of Kenelm Kneebone, a
staunch Catholic, and a sergeant of dragoons, who lost his legs and his
life while fighting for James the Second at the battle of the Boyne, and
who had little to bequeath his son except his laurels and his loyalty to
the house of Stuart.

The gallant woollen-draper was now in his thirty-sixth year. He had a
handsome, jolly-looking face; stood six feet two in his stockings; and
measured more than a cloth-yard shaft across the shoulders--athletic
proportions derived from his father the dragoon. And, if it had not been
for a taste for plotting, which was continually getting him into
scrapes, he might have been accounted a respectable member of society.

Of late, however, his plotting had assumed a more dark and dangerous
complexion. The times were such that, with the opinions he entertained,
he could not remain idle. The spirit of disaffection was busy throughout
the kingdom. It was on the eve of that memorable rebellion which broke
forth, two months later, in Scotland. Since the accession of George the
First to the throne in the preceding year, every effort had been made by
the partisans of the Stuarts to shake the credit of the existing
government, and to