How this might have ended, and whether he might or might not have been hurried into any rashness had this state continued much longer, I cannot say; for, although he had been well drilled by adversity, by difficulties, and by dangers, and was competent to deal as calmly as any man with most of the ordinary things of life, yet he was impetuous by nature, and the sensations which he now experienced were so new and strange to him, that he could not bring them under any rule obtained from experience of the past. That state, however, was not destined to last long; for, on the fourth day after Sir James Mount's visit, as he sat in his room very early in the morning enjoying the splendid rising of the sun, and indulging the thoughts with which lovers vivify the morning beans, he heard a gentle tap at his door. No sound had previously disturbed the silence which had reigned throughout the house during the night; no housemaid's pail had been heard clattering; no ancient serving-man of matutinal habits had unbarred windows and opened doors; and, without venturing to say aloud, "Come in," Smeaton rose to ascertain with his eyes who was his early visitor. He found good Mrs. Culpepper herself standing in the passage without; but, as soon as she saw that he was up and dressed, she entered in silence with her noiseless step, and quietly closed the door behind her. "I have wanted to see you, sir, for some time," she said; "but Sir John Newark is all eyes; and I dare not let him perceive that I know anything at all of you for fear of spoiling everything. But I thought that old Nanny might very well come to see her boy, even in his bed-room, and so I got myself up early. There are strange stories running about the country, sir. They say, people are actually in arms in the north. Oh, Harry, have nothing to do with them; for this thing will never succeed, depend upon it. More than one half of the gentry, and most men of the middle station, are against it." "I have not the slightest intention, my dear Nanny, to take any part in these rash movements," replied Smeaton. "I am quite as well aware of their hopelessness as you can be." "But I fear Sir John," said the old woman. "I fear him very much. He is just the man to keep out of all perils himself, and to put other people in for the purpose of seeing what he can get out of the spoil. I wish to Heaven you were away, pleasant as it is to see you. I wish you were in France again. Can you not go, and keep yourself quiet there?" Smeaton shook his head with a faint and somewhat melancholy smile. "I cannot go at present, Nanny," he said. "That is impossible. I have ties to this land now, more hard to break than those which bind me to any other."