"So ends my pilgrimage!" said Ned Dyram, as he packed up his disguise in the napkin; "and, by my faith, I have brought home my wallet well stored. Out upon it!--am I to labour thus always for others? No, by my faith! I will at least keep some of the crusts I have got for myself; and if others want them they must pay for them. Let me see;--we will divide them fairly. Dame Julian and brother Clement in one lot; brother Martin in the other. That will do; and if aught be said about it hereafter, I will speak the truth, and avow that, had I been paid, I would have spoken. Alchemy is a great thing;--without its aid I could never have transmuted brother Martin's leaden silence into such golden loquacity. Why, I have taught the old man more in an hour than he has learned in his life before; and he has given wheat for rye; so that we are even." With these sage reflections, Ned Dyram put his packet under his arm and walked on to Andover--where, at a little hostelry by the side of the river, he paused and called for his horse, which was soon brought. A cup of ale sufficed him for refreshment, and after he had drained it to the dregs, he trotted off upon the road to London, still meditating over all that he had learned at Abbot's Ann and Dunbury Abbey, and somewhat hesitating as to the course which he had to pursue. It would afford little either of instruction or amusement, were I to trace all the reflections of a cunning but wayward mind--for such was that of Edward Dyram. Naturally possessed of considerable abilities, quick in acquirements, retentive in memory, keen, observing, dexterous, he might have risen to wealth, and perhaps distinction; for his were not talents of that kind which led some of the best scholars of that day to beg from door to door, with a certificate of their profound science from the chancellors of their universities, but of a much more serviceable and worthy kind. A certain degree of waywardness of mind and inconstancy of disposition--often approaching that touch of insanity, which affected, or was affected by, those wise men the court fools of almost all epochs--and an unscrupulousness in matters of principle, which left his conduct often in very doubtful balance between honesty and knavery, had barred his advancement in all the many walks he had tried. He had strong, and even ungovernable animal impulses also, which had more than once led him into situations of difficulty, and between which and his natural ambition, there was the same struggle that frequently took place between his good sense and his folly. He laboured hard, not perhaps to govern his passions, but rather to keep their gratification within safe limits; and he felt a sort of ill-will towards himself when they overcame him, which generated a cynical bitterness towards others. That bitterness was also increased by a consciousness of not having succeeded in any course as much as the talents he knew himself to possess might have