influx of tenantry; and thus the feeling of security with which he had taken possession of Langley Hall soon disappeared, and he became very uneasy indeed. In after periods of the civil war, when the bold and decided tone of the parliament had spread to the whole party, and the simple justice or petty commissioner, knowing that any violence against a malignant would receive countenance and applause from those who had the power of the state in their hands, ventured every excess against their enemies, Captain Hargood would have overcome the difficulty at once by marching off Lady Margaret and the principal members of her household to Beverley or Hull. But the Roundhead party, in remote provinces, had not yet acquired full confidence either in its strength or in its leaders; and steps afterwards taken as a matter of course were now not even thought of. His only resource, therefore, was to reinforce his numbers, if possible, and to make such changes in the disposition of his men in the mean while as would guard against surprise. During the hours, then, at which the hall was thronged with the tenants and farmers, he gathered his men together into one part of the house, and there kept them till he found that the visiters who alarmed him were departing. But this was all that Lady Margaret desired; and, the unpleasant espial being removed from about nine in the morning till about one o'clock, ample time was afforded for very easy communication with the Earl of Beverley, both to cheer him by the society of his friends and supply him with all that might be necessary to his comfort. As only one of the party could venture to be absent at a time, it may easily be supposed that Annie Walton was the person most frequently fixed upon, as she was certainly the one best fitted to console the weary hours of the earl in the strange sort of captivity to which he was reduced; and many and many a happy hour, during the next four days, did the two lovers spend together. Of the present they had but little to say. No news of any importance reached the Hall, and the brief laugh excited by the success of Lady Margaret's stratagem for driving the militia-men into one particular portion of the house soon passed away. It was upon the past and upon the future, then, that their thoughts and conversation principally turned; but, though the mind of Annie Walton certainly rested more often and more anxiously upon the coming years than upon the past, yet the apprehensions that she entertained regarding them, the too intense interest they excited, and the agitation which the contemplation of all that might take place produced, naturally led her to seek relief in the softened influences of the past; and she would willingly dwell with her lover upon all the thousand little events of early days, showing him, without reserve, all the secrets of her own pure and guileless heart, and seeking playfully and yet eagerly to discover those of his.