Every one went after the runaway to see the fate of the party; but strange to say, the horse was lodged high and dry in the hedge row, while William and the girls crawled out of the wreck without a scratch, soon recovering from the fear, trepidation and danger that but a moment before reigned supreme. We put up for the night at the Red Lion Tavern, and you may be sure that William was the hero of the town. Rose and Bess Montagle were the young ladies whose lives had been providentially saved, and their father was the head gamekeeper of Windsor. William was invited for breakfast the next morning at the stone lodge to receive hearty thanks and reward for his heroic action in risking his life for the salvation of others; but the Bard excused himself, saying that he must start by daylight for his last stretch to London, and only asked from the young ladies a sprig of boxwood and lock of their golden hair. At parting the father threw William a bag of gold, and the girls presented him with the tokens desired, in addition to impulsive bashful kisses. We were off promptly by sunrise, and steering our course to Houndslow, Brentford, Kensington, and to the top of Primrose Hill, we first caught sight of the spires, domes, turrets, temples and palaces of multitudinous, universal London. _"London, the needy villain's general home, The common sewer of Paris and of Rome; With eager thirst by folly or by fate, Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state."_ CHAPTER V. LONDON. ITS GUILT AND GLORY. _"They say, best men are molded out of faults; And for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad."_ It was on the 13th of September, 1586, that William and myself first feasted our eyes on the variegated wilderness of wood, mortar, stone and tile of wonderful London. The evening was bright and clear, while a north-west wind blew away the smoky clouds that hovered over the city like a funeral pall, displaying to our view the silver sinuosities of old Father Thames, as he moved in sluggish grandeur by Westminster, Blackfriars Bridge, the Tower, and to Gravesend, on his way to the channel and the sea. To get a grand view of the town, an old sexton advised us to climb the steeple steps of crumbling Saint Mary's, that once felt the tread of the Crusaders, and heard the chanting hymn of monks, nuns and friars five hundred years before. Standing on a broken column of the old steeple, three hundred feet above Primrose Hill, William struck an attitude of theatrical fashion and uttered the following oratorical flight: