These refusals and subterfuges were a sad damper to Mr. Heffernan's hopes. To any one less sanguine, they would have led to a total abandonment of the enterprise. He, however, was made of sterner stuff, and resolved, if the demonstration could effect no more, it could at least be used as a threat to the Government,--a threat of not less power because its terrors were involved in mystery. With all these disappointments time sped on, the important day arrived, and the great room of the Rotunda, hired specially for the occasion, was crowded by a numerous assemblage, to whose proceedings no member of the public press was admitted. Notice was given that in due time a declaration, drawn up by a committee, would be published; but until then the most profound secrecy wrapped their objects and intentions. The meeting, convened for one o'clock, separated at five; and, save the unusual concourse of carriages, and the spectacle of some liveries new to the capital, there seemed nothing to excite the public attention. No loud-tongued orator was heard from without, nor did a single cheer mark the reception of any welcome sentiment; and as the members withdrew, the sarcastic allusions of the mob intimated that they were supposed to be a new sect of “Quakers.” Heffernan's carriage was the last to leave the door; and it was remarked, as he entered it, that he looked agitated and ill,--signs which few had ever remarked in him before. He drove rapidly home, where a small and select party of friends had been invited by him to dinner. He made a hasty toilet, and entered the drawing-room a few moments after the first knock at the street-door announced the earliest guest. It was an old and intimate friend, Sir Giles St. George, a south-country baronet of old family, but small fortune, who for many years had speculated on Heffernan's interest in his behalf. He was a shrewd, coarse man, who from eccentricity and age had obtained a species of moral “writ of ease,” absolving him from all observance of the usages in common among all well-bred people,--a privilege he certainly did not seem disposed to let rust from disuse. “Well, Con,” said he, as he stood with his back to the fire, and his hands deeply thrust into his breeches-pockets,--“well, Con, your Convention has been a damnable failure. Where the devil did you get up such a rabble of briefless barristers, ungowned attorneys, dissenting ministers, and illegitimate sons? I'd swear, out of your seven hundred, there were not five-and-twenty possessed of a fifty-pound freehold,--not five who could defy the sheriff in their own county.” Heffernan made no reply, but with arms crossed, and his head leaned forward, walked slowly up and down the room, while the other resumed,--