"Well, I promised you I would tell you all about Laud; but first let me tell you that I set him right about your ugly speech that night when you got such a ducking." "Did you? did you, indeed? What did he say to it? Did he forgive me?" "Did he? Aye! I'll tell you what, I never saw a fellow so dumb-foundered before. He looked almost like a madman, cursed his stars, and swore they were all confederate against him. He swore you were the best creature in the world, and if he could but see you, he would make you happy." "Oh, John! how good you were to tell him! But where is he? Is he in Ipswich? Do bring me to him?" "Hold hard a bit; I must let you into a little bit of a secret. You must know that Laud and I are upon such intimate terms, that we communicate by a kind of expression known only to ourselves. He, as you know, went back to smuggling again after your rap, though that was not intentional on your part. He did not go to sea, but entered upon the timber trade, though he employed about twenty men under him to carry on his traffic. Now I know he would have gone in search of your hiding-place, if he had not been compelled to hide himself. The fact is, he is escaped from an arrest for five hundred pounds which he was bound to pay to the Excise, and but for a very lucky turn he would have been nabbed last night." "Well, but where is he now?" "I will tell you where he may be found to-morrow. All I know now is, that he took the mail last night, by the greatest good luck in the world, and went off to London. He is to write to me to-night, and I shall be able to tell you to-morrow." That this was all a mere invention of this rascal's, to get out of Margaret all he could, the reader will easily believe. Lucky was it for her that she did not tell him what sum of money she had belonging to Laud, or every farthing of it would have gone into this fellow's hands. As it was, he managed to get out of her what little cash she could spare, under the promise of revealing to her the hiding-place of Laud. After chatting with him a long time, and hearing much of herself and her lover, all pure inventions of this fellow's brain, and easily detected by any person with less blindness upon the subject, Margaret took her leave of him, giving him half-a-crown to spend. She returned to the Widow Syers', and, as might be supposed, passed a feverish night, restless with nervous anxiety. Poor girl! she little thought of the mischief then brooding for her ruin. The morrow came, bringing a letter to John Cook, of a very different description to that which Margaret anticipated. It ran thus:-- "Dog and Bone, Lambeth, "May 8th, 1797. "Jack,