Foster who now stood before them was the last person, judging from personal appearance, upon whom one would have chosen to intrude an unexpected and undesired visit. His attire was a doublet of russet leather, like those worn by the better sort of country folk, girt with a buff belt, in which was stuck on the right side, a long knife or dudgeon dagger, and on the other a cutlass. He raised his eyes as he entered the room, and fixed a keenly penetrating glance upon his two visiters, then cast them down as if counting his steps, while he advanced slowly into the middle of the room, and said, in a low and smothered tone of voice, "Let me pray you, gentlemen, to tell me the cause of this visit."

He looked as if he expected the answer from Tressilian; so true was Lambourne's observation, that the superior air of breeding and dignity shone through the disguise of an inferior dress. But it was Michael who replied to him, with the easy familiarity of an old friend, and a tone which seemed unembarrassed by any doubt of the most cordial reception.

"Ha! my dear friend and ingle, Tony Foster !" he exclaimed, seizing upon the unwilling hand, and shaking it with such emphasis as almost to stagger the sturdy frame of the person whom he addressed ; "how fares it with you for many a long year?-What! have you altogether forgotten your friend, gossip, and play-fellow, Michael Lambourne?"

"Michael Lambourne !" said Foster, looking at him a moment, then dropping his eyes, and with little cere- . mony extricating his hand from the friendly grasp of the person by whom he was addressed, "are you Michael Lambourne ?"

"Ay; sure as you are Anthony Foster," replied Lambourne.

" "Tis well!" answered his sullen host ; " and what may Michael Lambourne expect from his visit hither?" "Voto a Dios," answered Lambourne, "I expected a better welcome than I am like to meet, I think."

"Why, thou gallows-bird-thou jail-rat-thou friend of the hangman and his customers," replied Foster, "hast thou the assurance to expect countenance from any one whose neck is beyond the compass of a Tyburn tippet ?"

"It may be with me as you say," replied Lambourne ; "and suppose I grant it to be so for argument's sake, I were still good enough society for mine ancient friend Anthony Fire-the-Faggot, though he be, for the present, by some indescribable title, the master of Cumnor-Place.". "Hark you, Michael Lambourne," said Foster; "you are a gambler now, and live by the counting of chances -Compute me the odds that I do not, on this instant, throw you out of that window into the ditch there."

"Twenty to one that you do not," answered the sturdy visiter.

for

“And wherefore, I pray you ?" demanded Anthony Foster, setting his teeth and compressing his lips, like one who endeavours to suppress some violent internal emotion. "Because," said Lambourne, coolly, "you dare not your life lay a finger on me. I am younger and stronger than you, and have in me a double portion of the fighting devil, though not it may be, quite so much of the undermining fiend, that finds an under-ground way to his purpose who hides halters under folk's pillows, and who puts ratsbane into their porridge, as the stage-play says."

Foster looked at him earnestly, then turned away and paced the room twice, with the same steady and considerate pace with which he had entered it; then suddenly came back and extended his hand to Michael Lambourne, saying, "Be not wroth with me, good Mike; I did but try whether thou hadst parted with aught of thine old and honourable frankness, which your enviers and backbiters called saucy impudence."

"Let them call it what they will," said Michael Lambourne," it is the commodity we must carry through the world with us.-Uds daggers! I tell thee, man, mine own stock of assurance was too small to trade upon, I

4 VOL. I.

was fain to take in a ton or two more of brass at every port where I touched in the voyage of life; and I started overboard what modesty and scruples I had remaining, in order to make room for the stowage."

"Nay, nay," replied Foster, "touching scruples and modesty, you sailed hence in ballast.-But who is this gallant, honest Mike ?—is he a Corinthian—a cutter like thyself?"

"I prithee, know Master Tressilian, bully Foster," replied Lambourne, presenting his friend in answer to his friend's question, "know him and honour him, for he is a gentleman of many admirable qualities; and though he traffics not in my line of business, at least so far as I know, he has, nevertheless, a just respect and admiration for artists of our class. He will come to in time, as seldom fails; but as yet he is only a Neophyte, only a Proselyte, and frequents the company of cocks of the game, as a puny fencer does the schools of the masters, to see how a foil is handled by the teachers of defence."

in

"If such be his quality, I will pray your company another chamber, honest Mike, for what I have to say to thee is for thy private ear.-Meanwhile, I pray you, sir, to abide us in this apartment, and without leaving it— there be those in this house who would be alarmed by the sight of a stranger."

Tressilian acquiesced, and the, two worthies left the apartment together, in which he remained alone to await their return.

CHAPTER IV.

Not serve two masters ?-Here's a youth will try it-
Would fain serve God, yet give the devil his due ;
Says grace before he doth a deed of villany,
And returns his thanks devoutly when 'tis acted.

Old Play.

THE room into which the Master of Cumnor-Place conducted his worthy visitant, was of greater extent than that in which they had at first conversed, and had yet more the appearance of dilapidation. Large oaken presses, filled with shelves of the same wood, surrounded the room, and had at one time served for the arrangement of a numerous collection of books, many of which yet remained, but torn and defaced, covered with dust, deprived of their costly clasps and bindings, and tossed together in heaps upon the shelves, as things altogether disregarded, and abandoned to the pleasure of every spoiler. The very presses themselves seemed to have incurred the hostility of those enemies of learning, who had destroyed the volumes with which they had been heretofore filled. They were, in several places, dismantled of their shelves, and otherwise broken and damaged, and were, moreover, mantled with cobwebs, and covered with dust.

"The men who wrote these books," said Lambourne, looking round him, "little thought whose keeping they were to fall into."

"Nor what yeoman's service they were to do me," quoth Anthony Foster-" the cook hath used them for scouring his pewter, and the groom hath had nought else to clean my boots with this many a month past."

"And yet," said Lambourne, "I have been in cities where such learned commodities would have been deemed too good for such offices."

"Pshaw, pshaw," answered Foster, "they are Popish trash, every one of them,-private studies of the mumping old Abbot of Abingdon. The nineteenthly of a pure gospel sermon were worth a cart-load of such rakings of the kennel of Rome."

“Gad-a-mercy, Master Tony Fire-the-Faggot!" said Lambourne, by way of reply.

Foster scowled darkly at him, as he replied, "Hark ye, friend Mike; forget that name, and the passage which it relates to, if you would not have our newly-revived comradeship die a sudden and a violent death."

66

you were wont to

Why," said Michael Lambourne, “ glory in the share you had in the death of the two old heretical bishops.'

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That," said his comrade, "was while I was in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity and applies not to my walk or my ways, now that I am called forth into the lists. Mr. Melchisedec Maultext compared my misfortune in that matter to that of the Apostle Paul, who kept the clothes of the witnesses who stoned Saint Stephen. He held forth on the matter three Sabbaths past, and illustrated the same by the conduct of an honourable person present, meaning me."

"I prithee peace, Foster," said Lambourne, " for 1 know not how it is, I have a sort of creeping comes over my skin when I hear the devil quote Scripture; and besides, man, how couldst thou have the heart to quit that convenient old religion, which you could slip off or on as easily as your glove? Do I not remember how you were wont to carry your conscience to confession, as duly as the month came round? and when thou hadst had it scoured, and burnished, and white-washed by the priest, thou wert ever ready for the worst villany which could be devised, like a child who is always readiest to rush into the mire when he has got his Sunday's clean jerkin on."

"Trouble not thyself about my conscience," said Foster, "it is a thing thou canst not understand, having never had one of thine own. But let us rather to the point, and