"Say no more, say no more, sir!" he replied in a low tone, smoothing down his countenance as best he might; "We cannot talk upon this subject now. Rest satisfied, however, that you will not be sorry for the trust you have reposed in me, and will find me the same man as you supposed. I will see you again in private whenever I may meet with a convenient opportunity; but in the mean time I am afraid you must content yourself with the poor accommodation which you have, for any change in it would beget suspicion, and I have shrewd and evil eyes upon me here; so I must now send you away at once. Here, guard," he continued, "take the prisoner back. Let him be well used, and provided with all things necessary, but at the same time have a strict eye upon him, and suffer no one to communicate with him but myself." Lord Beverley bowed and withdrew, and Hotham, with strong signs of agitation still in his countenance, returned to his companions, saying-- "That Frenchman is a shrewd fellow, and knows more of the king's councils than I could have imagined; but I must go and write a despatch to the parliament, for he has told me things that they will be glad to know, and I trust that in a few days I shall learn more from him still." Thus speaking, he retired from the hall, and one of the gentlemen present inquired of another who was standing near-- "Did you not think that what they were saying just now in the window sounded very like English?" "Oh," replied Colonel Hotham, with a sneer, "my father's French has quite an English tone. He changes the words, it is true, but not the accent." In the mean while the earl was carried back to the block-house, and towards evening he received a few words, written on a scrap of paper, telling him that the governor would be with him about ten o'clock that night. This was a mark of favour and consideration which Lord Beverley scarcely expected, notwithstanding the difference of rank between himself and Sir John Hotham, and the promises of honourable dealing which the latter had made. There were also signs of a willingness to attend to his comfort, which were even more consolatory in the conclusions he drew from them than in the acts themselves. Poor Sinbad the sailor, when he fell into the hands of the cannibal blacks, looked upon all the good cheer that they placed before him as merely the means employed to fatten him previous to killing and eating him; but, as we never had such anthropophagous habits in Great Britain, even during the great rebellion itself, the earl, when he saw sundry much more savoury dishes provided for his dinner than he had hitherto been favoured with, and a bottle of very good wine to wash them down withal, received them as a mark of the governor's good intentions, and an indication that there was some probability of his imprisonment coming to an end by a more pleasant process than a walk to the scaffold.