This proposal was agreed to by Ned Hayward, though the expression which his friend used, in regard to screening the offender, struck him as somewhat strange. It is wonderful, however, how often in life we do what is vulgarly termed, reckon without our host. The two gentlemen retired to rest in the rooms above, which had been prepared and furnished for them in haste, since the duel with young Wittingham; and Stephen Gimlet and Widow Lamb also sought repose. Early the next morning, however, the gamekeeper rose to seek a constable; but first he thought it expedient to look at the temporary prison in which he had confined Captain Moreton. The doors, both of church and vestry, were still closed and locked; but passing round, towards his own cottage again, by a little grass-grown path, that ran under the church walls Ste Gimlet was surprised and confounded to perceive that three of the bars covering the window of the vestry, had been forced out of the old mortar in which they had been socketed; and, jumping up on a tombstone to look in, he soon saw that the bird, as he expected, had taken wing from its cage. Stephen Gimlet, notwithstanding this discovery, did not return to his cottage at once, to communicate the intelligence to those within. He paused and thought; but, to say truth, it was not of the event which he had just ascertained that he meditated. That was done and over: the man was gone, and might never be caught again; but the words which Beauchamp had spoken the night before had made a deeper impression upon his mind than they had upon Ned Hayward's, and naturally, for the young officer had never remarked or heard any thing before, which could lead his fancy to perceive any connexion between his friend and Captain Moreton. Stephen Gimlet, on the contrary, had observed much that excited his imagination, and it was one of a very active character. He remembered the interest which Beauchamp had displayed in the monuments of the Moreton family; he remembered all the inquiries he had made regarding their former property; and he did not forget either his mother-in-law's ancient connexion with one of the members of that house, or the somewhat mysterious expressions she had used in regard to Beauchamp himself. It was a tangled skein, difficult to unravel, but yet he resolved to unravel it; not exactly from curiosity, though curiosity might have some share therein, but rather because, in his wild fancy, he dreamed that the knowledge which Goody Lamb possessed of his guest's previous history, might afford him some means of serving a man he looked upon as his benefactor. He was peculiarly susceptible of kindness or unkindness, of gratitude or its reverse, resentment, and he thought that it would be a happy day for him if he could ever return to Mr. Beauchamp, even in a small degree, the kindness he had received. He pondered upon these things for full five minutes, and then returned to his cottage, where he found the old