To attempt to describe the wild but tenderhearted Cavalier's grief would be both painful and unprofitable.

Suffice it to say that at first he remained silent, breathless, and paralysed; and then succeeded such a storm of fierce soul-stirring sorrow, as to make Milton fear that his reason would indeed give way under that terrible pressure.

To no words of consolation would he give ear; all he desired, he vowed, was death-immediate annihilation! that he might leave this cold, vile world, and join her who was now an angel in a better !

And so he raved, and wept, and mourned, with deep and passionate woe. John Milton however, had been brought up in a school in which the direct and immediate action of Providence on human affairs was a favourite dogma, and submission therefore to misfortunes, the real test of faith; he had moreover himself been chastened much in his worthy career by domestic troubles, and so he came to consider it actually sinful in finite beings to challenge by unbending grief, the inscrutable decrees of Omnipotence. He therefore assumed a higher tone towards the impulsive sufferer, and thus struck a chord in the latter's sensitive mind which had hitherto remained unstrung.

For Sedley, like the majority of the refined and

educated classes, had never known Religion excepting as a ceremony whose mysteries required the interpretation of a traditional race, while its precepts conveyed only a sort of conventional authority.

In fact his religious code was summed up in the belief, that to behave like a gentleman in the worldly sense, entitled a man to be considered a sufficiently good christian in every other! So at first, he heard its stern and uncompromising doctrines as propounded by the Great Puritan Poet with something like anger, and then with surprise, but presently with attention; and at length its loftier philosophy, as preparing man by suffering and temptation in this erring state for a nobler mission hereafter, began to touch his imagination and impress his naturally good disposition; and he became to a certain extent resigned to his great and almost irreparable loss.

His friend took advantage of this change of mood, to propose that they should proceed together to Maddersfield, and perform the last earthly ceremonies for her, who they both verily believed was already the denizen of better and brighter spheres in company with her loved and lamented mother; and the Poet in his gentle enthusiasm, even pictured them as looking down unfettered and unsoiled by the sorrows of their earthly pilgrimage, sympathisingly on the dear ones left for a brief

period behind, with mournful, sweet, and loving eyes.

Thither accordingly they went weeping and silent, but full of solemn hopes of future promise; and due preparations having been made, the poor Wanderer was interred in a little churchyard hard by, Mr. Milton, after the custom of his sect, performing the sacred service for the dead himself.

CHAPTER VI.

EXPLANATIONS.

Which to be understood, must at all events be read.

ANONYMOUS.

THE efforts made to discover the real perpetrators of the horrid deed which had so unjustly been laid to Ralph Sedley's charge met with signal success ; for within a few hours after the offers of pardon and reward had been promulgated, some desperate characters who were confined in Worcester gaol on very serious charges, volunteered the requisite information.

These men proved to be members of a Band of "Wild Riders" who had long infested the neighbourhood of London, and who after the custom of banditti in that age, had followed the soldiery down into Worcestershire with the view of levying contributions from the countryside without reference to party distinctions, on pretence of acting under the orders of various officers commanding detachments and outposts.

And as they possessed the bearing and a good deal of the discipline of the Regulars, many of them having actually served in the ranks during the civil troubles, by shifting their pretended allegiance from one side to the other according to circumstances, they had in this daring but not uncommon speculation met with considerable success during the continuance of hostilities; but no sooner had these ceased, than the keen supervision of the Parliamentary Commissioners compelled them to withdraw to their old haunts, not however fortunately without leaving some of their number in the hands of Justice.

Of these latter, three desperadoes came eagerly forward to accept the conditions of pardon above adverted to; one of them being a fellow well known to fireside gossips under the soubriquet of "Black Jack," and who it seemed held the responsible position of Lieutenant to the Band.

We will not at this stage of our story enter into the details of their evidence, as its substance will appear in the Count Latour's own confession, to which we now beg to call the reader's attention, as elucidating some of the mysteries which have hitherto clouded our story; and at the same time as illustrating, in Hogarthic fashion, the chain of mental misconception through which dispositions and intellects of sufficient promise in the beginning