first, the proceeds of Cheddar living in his pocket, and, next, the gratification of telling the flock of Noble that they were one and all in the broad road to destruction. Nor did this insidious priest fail to spread all sorts of calumnies about the poor unconscious vicar, and to irritate many furious zealots against him. He kept up a constant correspondence with a political partisan in London, to whom he gave much information on local and county matters, stretching his invention not a little when he had to tell any thing against the Royalists of those parts. By this means he got a name as a person well affected to the Parliament, and greatly interested in the cause of religious liberty. It so happened, that, in the November immediately following the breaking out of the war, and the great battle of Keinton, a body of Parliamentarian horse being quartered in his neighbourhood, Daws found a fit instrument for his purposes on Cheddar, in a most furious and bigotted fanatic, who commanded a troop of horse. This man was easily persuaded that he could not render a more acceptable service to God than by destroying with fire and sword all places, all persons, and all things, which were, in his own view, defiled, and idolatrous, and impure; and he therefore sallied forth against the church and the parson of Cheddar as he would against a temple and a priest of Baal. On the day on which old Noble was ejected from Cheddar, with many circumstances of cruelty and hardship, he arose, as usual, with some fears, but with unshaken trust in the goodness and mercy of an all-wise and almighty Father. The day was cold, and not a sunbeam was admitted through the cloud and gloom which brooded over all things. It chanced that the stout and resolute old franklin Blount had determined that his grandchild should be publicly baptized at the same ancient font at which his own venerable forehead had been signed with the sign of the cross. There was some doubt in the mind of his son-in-law, Hargood, whether it was prudent at that moment of busy persecution, on the part of the county committee, to make so open a display of devout attachment to the hallowed ceremony of a christening. His loving daughter, from a tender apprehension about her infant’s safety, if any thing should fall out amiss, would have stolen to church, at the earliest possible hour, and in the most quiet manner. However, habits of submission to her father, formed by an admiration of his character, were of so long a growth, and so deeply rooted, that the remonstrance of her fears was not ventured on; indeed Blount would have held it craven to yield to the timid suggestions of prudence, where he looked to a principle in his conduct. It is not improbable that some shadow of a domestic tragedy had been cast upon the old man’s solitary thoughts; for, within a few days past, there had been observable in his manner a mixture of severity and gentleness at once strange and affecting.