rangle, with freedom to use the old elaboratory and its implements. He is to have no access to the lady but such as I shall point out-only she may be amused to see his philosophical jugglery. Thou wilt await at Cumnor Place my farther or ders; and, as thou livest, beware of the ale-bench and the aqua-vitæ flask. Each breath drawn in Cumnor Place must be kept severed from common air."

"Enough, my lord-I mean my worshipful master-soon, I trust, to be my worshipful knightly master. You have given me my lesson and my license; I will execute the one, and not abuse the other. I will be in the saddle by day-break."

"Do so, and deserve favour.-Stay-ere thou goest fill me a cup of wine-not out of that flask, sirrah,”—as Lambourne was pouring out from that which Alasco had left half finished, "fetch me a fresh one."

Lambourne obeyed, and Varney, after rinsing his mouth with the liquor, drank a full cup, and said, as he took up a lamp to retreat to his sleeping apartment," It is strange-I am as little the slave of fancy as any one, yet I never speak for a

few minutes with this fellow Alasco, but my mouth and lungs feel as if soiled with the fumes of calcined arsenic-pah !"

So saying, he left the apartment. Lambourne lingered, to drink a cup of the freshly opened flask. "It is from Saint-John's-Berg," he said, as he paused on the draught to enjoy its flavour, "and has the true relish of the violet. But I must forbear it now, that I may one day drink it: at my own pleasure." And he quaffed a goblet of water to quench the fumes of the Rhenish wine, retired slowly towards the door, made a pause, and then, finding the temptation irresistible, walked hastily back, and took another long pull at the wine flask, without the formality of a cup.

"Were it not for this accursed custom," he said, "I might climb as high as Varney himself. But who can climb, when the room turns round with him like a parish-top? I would the distance were greater, or the road rougher, betwixt my hand and mouth!-But I will drink nothing tomorrow, save water-nothing save fair water.”

CHAPTER VII.

Pistol. And tidings do I bring, and lucky joys,

And happy news of price.

Falstaff. I prythee now deliver them like to men of this world. Pistol. A foutra for the world, and worldlings base!

I speak of Africa, and golden joys.

Henry IV. Part 2.

THE public room of the Black Bear at Cumnor, to which the scene of our story now returns, boasted, on the evening which we treat of, no ordinary assemblage of guests. There had been a fair in the neighbourhood, and the cutting mercer of Abingdon, with some of the other personages whom the reader has already been made acquainted with, as friends and customers of Giles Gosling, had already formed their wonted circle around the evening fire, and were talking over the news of the day.

A lively, bustling, arch fellow, whose pack and oaken ell-wand, studded duly with brass points, denoted him to be of Autolycus's profession, oc

cupied a good deal of the attention, and furnished much of the amusement, of the evening. The pedlars of these days, it must be remembered, were men of far greater importance than the degenerate and degraded hawkers of our modern times. It was by means of these peripatetic venders that the country-trade, in the finer manufactures used in female dress particularly, was almost entirely carried on; and if a merchant of this description arrived at the dignity of travelling with a packhorse, he was a person of no small consequence, and company for the most substantial yeoman or Franklin whom he might meet in his wanderings.

The pedlar of whom we speak bore, accordingly, an active and unrebuked share in the merri<ment to which the rafters of the bonny Black Bear of Cumnor resounded. He had his smile with pretty Mistress Cicely, his broad laugh with mine host, and his jest upon dashing Master Goldthred, who, though indeed without any such benevolent intention on his own part, was the general butt of the evening. The pedlar and he were closely engaged in a dispute upon the preference due to the Spanish nether stock over

the black Gascoigne hose, and mine host had just winked to the guests around him, as who should say, “ You will have mirth presently, my masters," when the trampling of horses was heard in the court-yard, and the hostler was loudly summoned, with a few of the newest oaths then in vague to add force to the invocation. Out tumbled Will Hostler, John Tapster, and all the militia of the inn, who had slunk from their posts in order to collect some scattered crumbs of the mirth which was flying about among the customers. Out into the yard sallied my host himself also, to do fitting salutation to his new guests; and presently returned, ushering into the apartment his own worthy nephew, Michael Lambourne, pretty tolerably drunk, and having under his escort the astrologer. Alasco, though still a little old man, had, by altering his gown to a ridingdress, trimming his beard and eye-brows, and so forth, struck at least a score of years from his apparent age, and might now seem an active man of sixty, or little upwards. He appeared at present exceedingly anxious, and had insisted much with Lambourne that they should not enter the inn,