and satellites about Shaws-Castle, and any personal
intercourse betwixt him and Clara became impossible, except under
the most desperate risks. Nay, such was their alarm, that Master
Francis thought it prudent, for Miss Mowbray's sake, to withdraw as
far as a town called Marchthorn, and there to conceal himself,
maintaining his intercourse with Clara only by letter.

"It was then I became the sheet-anchor of the hope of the lovers; it
was then my early dexterity and powers of contrivance were first put
to the test; and it would be too long to tell you in how many
shapes, and by how many contrivances, I acted as agent,
letter-carrier, and go-between, to maintain the intercourse of these
separated turtles. I have had a good deal of trouble in that way on
my own account, but never half so much as I took on account of this
brace of lovers. I scaled walls and swam rivers, set bloodhounds,
quarterstaves, and blunderbusses at defiance; and, excepting the
distant prospect of self-interest which I have hinted at, I was
neither to have honour nor reward for my pains. I will own to you,
that Clara Mowbray was so very beautiful--so absolutely confiding in
her lover's friend--and thrown into such close intercourse with me,
that there were times when I thought that, in conscience, she ought
not to have scrupled to have contributed a mite to reward the
faithful labourer. But then, she looked like purity itself; and I
was such a novice at that time of day, that I did not know how it
might have been possible for me to retreat, if I had made too bold
an advance--and, in short, I thought it best to content myself with
assisting true love to run smooth, in the hope that its course
would assure me, in the long-run, an Earl's title, and an Earl's
fortune.

"Nothing was, therefore, ventured on my part which could raise
suspicion, and, as the confidential friend of the lovers, I prepared
every thing for their secret marriage. The pastor of the parish
agreed to perform the ceremony, prevailed upon by an argument which
I used to him, and which Clara, had she guessed it, would have
little thanked me for. I led the honest man to believe, that, in
declining to do his office, he might prevent a too successful lover
from doing justice to a betrayed maiden; and the parson, who, I
found, had a spice of romanc