ath first feigned to discover a Covenanting plot against
His Majesty; and then turned it into a Popish one. There has been much
foolish talk about a meal-tub, and papers hidden in it, and such-like:
and now there is to be a great procession of malcontents to-morrow, to
burn the Pope and the Devil and Sir George Jeffreys, and God knows who,
at Temple Bar. But that is not all."

"Why, what else?" I asked. "And why is not the procession forbidden?"

"Who do you think is behind it all?" he said. "Why; no one less than my
Lord Shaftesbury himself. Dangerfield is but one of his tools. And that
is not all."

"Lord!" said I. "What a troublous country!" (I spoke lightly, for I did
not understand the weight of all these events.) "What else is the
matter?"

"It is the Duke of Monmouth," he said, "who is the pawn in
Shaftesbury's game. My Lord would give the world to have the Duke
declared legitimate, and so oust James. His Grace of Monmouth is
something of a popular hero now, after his doings in Scotland, and most
of all since he stands for the Protestant Religion. He hath dared to
strike out the bar sinister from his arms too; and goeth about the
country as if he were truly royal. So His Royal Highness is gone back to
Scotland again in a great fury; and His Majesty is once again in a
strait betwixt two, as the Scriptures say. There is his Catholic brother
on the one side; and there is this young spark of a Protestant bastard
on the other. We shall know better to-morrow how the feeling runs. His
Majesty was taken very ill in August; and I am not surprised at it."

* * * * *

This was all very heavy news for me. I had hoped in France that most at
least of the Catholic troubles were over, and now, here again they were,
in a new form. I sighed aloud.

"Heigho!" I said. "But this is all beyond me, Mr. Chiffinch. I had best
be gone into the country."

"I think you had," he said very seriously. "You can do nothing in this
place."

I was very glad when I heard him say that; for I had thought a great
deal of Hare Street, and of my Cousin Dolly there; and it was good news
to me to hear that I might soon see her again.

"But I must see the sight to-morrow," I said; and soon after that I took
my leave.

* * * * *

It was a marvellous sight indeed, the next evening. I went to see a Mr.
Martin in the morning, that lived in the Strand, a Catholic bookseller,
and got l