The sounds in my dream were not ideal. They reverberated on my waking ears, but it was two or three minutes ere I could collect myself so as distinctly to understand that they proceeded from a violent knocking at the gate. I leaped from my couch in great apprehension, took my sword under my arm, and hastened to forbid the admission of any one. But my route was necessarily circuitous, because the library looked not upon the quadrangle, but into the gardens. When I had reached a staircase, the windows of which opened upon the entrance court, I heard the feeble and intimidated tones of Syddall expostulating with rough voices, which demanded admittance, by the warrant of Justice Standish, and in the King's name, and threatened the old domestic with the heaviest penal consequences if he refused instant obedience. Ere they had ceased, I heard, to my unspeakable provocation, the voice of Andrew bidding Syddall stand aside, and let him open the door. "If they come in King George's name, we have naething to fear--we hae spent baith bluid and gowd for him--We dinna need to darn ourselves like some folks, Mr. Syddall--we are neither Papists nor Jacobites, I trow." It was in vain I accelerated my pace down stairs; I heard bolt after bolt withdrawn by the officious scoundrel, while all the time he was boasting his own and his master's loyalty to King George; and I could easily calculate that the party must enter before I could arrive at the door to replace the bars. Devoting the back of Andrew Fairservice to the cudgel so soon as I should have time to pay him his deserts, I ran back to the library, barricaded the door as I best could, and hastened to that by which Diana and her father entered, and begged for instant admittance. Diana herself undid the door. She was ready dressed, and betrayed neither perturbation nor fear. "Danger is so familiar to us," she said, "that we are always prepared to meet it. My father is already up--he is in Rashleigh's apartment. We will escape into the garden, and thence by the postern-gate (I have the key from Syddall in case of need.) into the wood--I know its dingles better than any one now alive. Keep them a few minutes in play. And, dear, dear Frank, once more fare-thee-well!" She vanished like a meteor to join her father, and the intruders were rapping violently, and attempting to force the library door by the time I had returned into it. "You robber dogs!" I exclaimed, wilfully mistaking the purpose of their disturbance, "if you do not instantly quit the house I will fire my blunderbuss through the door." "Fire a fule's bauble!" said Andrew Fairservice; "it's Mr. Clerk Jobson, with a legal warrant"-- "To search for, take, and apprehend," said the voice of that execrable pettifogger, "the bodies of certain persons in my warrant named, charged of high treason under the 13th of King William, chapter third."