"I wish to see you immediately, as I have come back, on various accounts, to stand my trial; but do not intend to surrender myself till the day on which it is to take place. If you will come down then to the little public-house, called the Falcon, in the village of Motstone, any time to-night or to-morrow morning, you will find, "Your's, "CHARLES TYRRELL." "Have a horse saddled directly," said Mr. Driesen, turning to the servant who waited, with looks of some surprise. "Have a horse saddled immediately, and brought round to the door." The servant hastened to obey, and as soon as he was gone, Mr. Driesen walked up and down the room for several minutes in a state of great agitation. "Come back to stand his trial!" he exclaimed. "He is mad. He will be hanged to a certainty. What in the name of Heaven can be done! Nothing, I am afraid; yet I must do my best, for this is terrible." Then as he revolved all the circumstances of Charles Tyrrell's case, ignorant as he was of what had been discovered since the young baronet had made his escape in the schooner, he became more and more convinced, that if he executed his purpose and really stood his trial, he would but seal his own destruction. "It is ruin, it is ruin"--he continued, walking up and down the room in great agitation. "He must be persuaded to return, to go back again before his coming is known, and yet, after all"--he continued, pausing and fixing his eyes upon a spot on the floor, "what signifies it? death is but a little thing; the extinction of a state of being, containing in itself more pangs than enjoyment, the only real pain of death is to the coward! Long sickness, indeed, may make it horrible. It is in the preceding things that death is painful--the act, itself, can be nothing--a mere bugbear of the imagination--and then how pleasant to lie down for a long sleep; to lie down as we do at night after a weary day; filled with cares, and anxieties, and pangs: to lie down with the blessing of knowing that we shall never wake again, to go through the same cares, and griefs, and sorrows, to endure the same pangs, and labours, and fatigues! Those must have been cunning fellows, that invented the bugbear of a future state, otherwise one half of the world would not go on till fifty. I wonder I have not cut my throat years ago. I suppose it is because I've had such good health, and no pain in life--I wonder if hanging is an easy death--laudanum they say is painful. Charcoal? the French are fond of charcoal. To think that a little carbon should be a remedy for all diseases!" "The horse, sir," said a servant, opening the door, and Mr. Driesen walking out took his hat and gloves, flung himself on the horse's back, and cantered quickly through the park. CHAPTER XXIV.