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a transplanted flower, had not a far deeper and more powerful motive of disunion existed between them.

Whilst wandering with her parents from city to city abroad, she had become acquainted with a lad a few years older than herself-a relation of Rochester's, in the service of the king, and an attachment warm, fervent, and indissoluble had ensued between the young exiles. When again for a short time in London with her mother, after the Restoration, the faithful lovers had met, and had renewed their engagement. Mrs. Norton, although not opposing the union, had desired some delay, and had died suddenly during the interval, leaving poor Rosamond in the guardianship of one who, of all men alive, was most certain to oppose the marriage. A courtier! a placeman! a kinsman of Rochester! -a favourite of Charles! Master Anthony would have thought present death a more hopeful destiny! That the young man was, in a position replete with danger and temptation, of unimpeachable morality and unexceptionable conduct, that he was as prudent as he was liberal, as good as he was gay,-mattered little; he would not have believed her assertions, although an angel had come from heaven to attest their truth. The first act of his authority as guardian was to forbid her holding any communication with her lover; and poor Rosamond's bitter declamation on the dullness and ugliness of Belford and the Golden Mortar might all be construed into one simple meaning,-that Belford was a place where Richard Tyson was not.

We have it however upon high authority, that through whatever obstacles may oppose themselves, Love will find out the way; and it is not wondered that, a few evenings after the commencement of our story, Richard Tyson, young and active, should have rowed his little boat up the river—have moored it in a small creek belonging to the wharf of which we have made mention, at the end of Master Anthony's garden-have climbed by the aid of a pile of timber to the top of the wallhave leaped down on a sloping bank of turf, which rendered the descent safe and easyand finally have hidden himself in a thicket of roses and honeysuckles, then in full bloom, to await the arrival of the lady of his heart. It was a lovely evening in the latter end of May, glowing, dewy, and fragrant as ever the nightingale selected for the wooing of the rose; and before the light had paled in the west, or the evening star glittered in the water, Richard's heart beat high within him at the sound of a light footstep and the rustling of a silken robe. She was alone-he was sure of that and he began to sing in a subdued tone a few words of a cavalier song which had been the signal of their meetings long ago, when, little more than boy and girl, the affection to which they hardly dared to give a

name had grown up between them in a foreign land. He sang a few words of that air which had been his summons at Brussels and the Hague, and in a moment the fair Rosamond, in the flowing dress which Lely has so often painted, and in all the glow of her animated beauty, stood panting and breathless before him.

What need to detail the interview? He pressed for an instant elopement-an immediate union, authorized by Rochester, connived at by the King; and she (such is the inconsistency of the human heart!) clung to the guardian whose rule she had thought so arbitrary—the home she had called so dreary: "she could not and would not leave Master Anthony;" all his kindness, his patient endurance of her pettishness, his fond anticipation of her wishes, his affectionate admonitions, his tender cares, rose before her as she thought of forsaking him; the good old man himself, with his thin and care-bent figure, his sad-coloured suit so accurately neat, and his mild, benevolent countenance, his venerable white head-all rose before her as she listened to the solicitations of her lover. "She could not leave Master Anthony !-she would wait till she was of age!"

"When you know, Rosamond, that your too careful mother fixed five-and-twenty as the period at which you were to attain your majority! How can I live during these tedious years of suspense and separation? Have we not already been too long parted? Come with me, sweetest! Come, I beseech you!" Wait, then, till the good old man con

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sents?"

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And that will be never! Trifle no longer, dearest!"

"I cannot leave Master Anthony! I cannot abandon him in his old age!"

And yet how Richard managed, Love only knows; but before the twilight darkened into night, the fair Rosamond was seated at his side, rowing quickly down the stream in his little boat to the lonely fisherman's hut, about a mile from Belford, where swift horses and a trusty servant awaited their arrival; and before noon the next day the young couple were married.

The power of the court, in nothing more unscrupulously exercised than in the affairs of wardships, speedily compelled Master Anthony to place Rosamond's fortune unreservedly in the hands of her husband, and the excellent conduct of the young man on an occasion not a little trying, the gratitude with! which he acknowledged the good management of her offended guardian, and begged him to dictate his own terms as to the settlements that should be made upon her, and to name himself the proper trustees-his deep personal respect, and earnest entreaties for the pardon and reconciliation, without which his wife's happiness would be incomplete,—were such

as might have mollified a harder heart than that of Master Shawe. That he continued obdurate, arose chiefly from the excess of his past fondness. In the course of his long life he had fondly loved two persons, and two only-Rosamond and her mother. The marriage of the first had fallen like a blight upon his manhood, had withered his affections, and palsied his energies in middle age; and now that the second object of his tenderness, the charming creature whom, for her own sake and for the remembrance of his early passion, he had loved as his own daughter-now that she had forsaken him, he was conscious of a bitterness of feeling, a vexed and angry grief, that seemed to turn his blood into gall. His mind settled down into a stern and moody resentment, to which forgiveness seemed impossible.

Rosamond grieved as an affectionate and grateful heart does grieve over the anger of her venerable guardian; and she grieved the more because her conscience told her that his displeasure, however excessive, was not undeserved. She that had been so repining and unthankful whilst the object of cares and the inmate of his mansion, now thought of the good old man with an aching gratitude, a yearning tenderness, all the deeper that these feelings were wholly unavailing. It was like the fond relenting, the too-late repentance with which we so often hang over the tomb of the dead, remembering all their past affection, and feeling how little we deserved, how inadequately we acknowledged it. Stern as he was, if Master Anthony could have seen into Rosamond's bosom, as she walked on a summer evening beneath the great lime-trees that overhung the murmuring Loddon, as it glided by her own garden at Burnham Manor, reminding her of the bright and silvery Kennet, and of the perfumed flower-garden by the High Bridge, could he at such a moment have read her inmost thoughts, have penetrated into her most hidden feelings, angry as he was, Master Shawe would have forgiven her.

This source of regret was, however, the solitary cloud, the single shadow that passed over her happiness. Richard Tyson proved exactly the husband that she had anticipated from his conduct and character as a lover. Adversity had done for him what it had failed to do for his master, and had prepared him to enjoy his present blessings with thankfulness and moderation. Attached to the court by ties which it was impossible to break, he yet resisted the temptation of carrying his young and beautiful wife into an atmosphere of so much danger. She lived at her own paternal seat of Burnhamn Manor, and he spent all the time that he could spare from his official station in that pleasant retirement-the easy distance of Burnham (which lay about six or seven miles east of Belford) from London, Windsor, and Hampton Court, rendering the union

of his public duties and his domestic pleasures comparatively easy.

So three years glided happily away, untroubled except by an occasional thought of her poor old guardian, whose "good white head," and pale, thoughtful countenance, would often rise unbidden to her memory. Three years had elapsed, and Rosamond was now the careful mother of two children; the one a delicate girl, about fourteen months old; the other a bold, sturdy boy, a twelvemonth older, to whom, with her husband's permission, she had given the name of Anthony. That kind husband was abroad on a mission of considerable delicacy, though of little ostensible importance, at one of the Italian courts; and his loving wife rejoiced in his absence-rejoiced even in the probability of its duration for this was the summer of 1665, and the fearful pestilence, the great Plague of London, was hovering like a demon over the devoted nation.

This is not the place in which to attempt a description of those horrors, familiar to every reader through the minute and accurate narratives of Pepys and Evelyn, and the graphic pictures of De Foe. In the depths of her tranquil seclusion, the young matron heard the distant rumours of that tremendous visitation on the devoted city, and clasping her children to her breast, blessed Heaven that they were safe in their country home, and that their dear father was far away. Had he been in England-in London-attending, as was the duty of his office, about the person of the king, how could the poor Rosamond have endured such a trial!

A day of grievous trial did arrive, although of a different nature. The panic-struck fugitives who fled from the city in hopes of shunning the disease, brought the infection with them into the country; and it was soon known in the little village of Burnham, that the plague raged in Belford: the markets, they said, were deserted; the shops were closed; visiters and watchmen were appointed; the fatal cross was affixed against the infected houses; and the only sounds heard in those once busy streets, were the tolling of the bell by day, and the rumbling of the dead-cart by night. London itself was not more grievously visited.

"And Master Anthony?" inquired Rosamond, as she listened with breathless horror to this fearful intelligence-" Master Anthony Shawe?"

The answer was such as she anticipated. In that deserted town Master Anthony was everywhere, succouring the sick, comforting the afflicted, relieving the poor; he alone walked the streets of that stricken city as fearlessly as if he bore a charmed life.

"Comforting and relieving others, and himself deserted and alone!" exclaimed Rosamond, bursting into a flood of tears. "God

bless him! God preserve him!"-"If he should die without forgiving me!" added she, wringing her hands with all the bitterness of a grief quickened by remorse-"If he should die without forgiving me!" And Rosamond wept as if her very heart would break.

Better hopes, however, soon arose. She knew that Master Anthony, singularly skilful in almost all disorders, had, when in the Levant, made a particular study of the fearful pestilence that was now raging about him; he had even instructed her in the symptoms, the preventives, and the treatment of a malady from which, in those days, London was seldom entirely free; and above all, she knew him to have a confirmed belief, that they who fearlessly ministered to the sick, who did their duty with proper caution, but without dread, seldom fell victims to the disorder. Rosamond remembered how often she had heard him say that "a godly courage was the best preservative!" She remembered the words, and the assured yet reverent look with which he spake them, and she wiped away her tears and was comforted.

In the peaceful retirement of Burnham, one of the small secluded villages which lie along the course of the Loddon, remote from great roads, a pastoral valley, hidden as it were amongst its own rich woodlands; in this calm seclusion she and her children and her household were as safe as if the pestilence had never visited England. All her anxieties turned, therefore, towards Belford; and Reuben Spence, an old and faithful servant, who had lived with her mother before her marriage, and had known Master Anthony all his life, contrived to procure her daily tidings of his welfare.

For some time these reports were sufficiently satisfactory: he was still seen about the streets on his errands of mercy. But one evening Reuben, on his return from his usual inquiries, hesitated to appear before his lady, and, when he did attend her repeated summons, wore a face of such dismay that, struck with a sure presage of evil, Rosamond exclaimed with desperate calmness, "He is dead! I can bear it. Tell me at once. He is dead?"

Reuben hastened to assure her that she was mistaken-that Master Anthony was not dead; but in answer to her eager inquiries he was compelled to answer, that he was said to be smitten with the disorder, that the fatal sign was on the door, and that there were rumours, for the truth of which he could not take upon himself to vouch, of plunder and abandonment, that a trusted servant was said to have robbed the old man and then deserted him, and that he who had been during this visitation the ministering angel of the town, was now left to die neglected and alone.

"Alone!—but did I not leave him? Abandoned!-did not I abandon him? Gracious God! direct me, and protect those poor inno

cents!" cried Rosamond, glancing on her children; and then ordering her palfrey to be made ready, she tore herself from the sleeping infants, wrote a brief letter to her husband, and silencing by an unusual exertion of authority the affectionate remonstrances of her household, who all guessed but too truly the place of her destination, set forth on the road to Belford, accompanied by old Reuben, who in vain assured her that she was risking her life to no purpose, for that the watchman would let no one enter an infected house.

"Alas!" replied Rosamond, "did I not leave that house? I shall find no difficulty in entering."

Accordingly she directed her course through the by-lanes leading to the old ruins, and then, stopping short at the Abbey Bridge, dismissed her faithful attendant, who cried like a child on parting from his fair mistress, and following the course of the river, reached the wellknown timber-wharf, and scaling with some little difficulty the wall over which her own Richard had assisted her so fondly upwards of three years before, found herself once again in Master Anthony's pleasant garden.

What a desolation! what a change! It was now the middle of September, and for many weeks the over-grown herbs and flowers had been left ungathered, unwatered, untended, uncared for; so that all looked wild and withered, neglected and decayed. The foot of man too had been there, trampling and treading down. The genius of Destruction seemed hovering over the place. All around the house, the garden, the river, the town, was as silent as death; the only sign of human habitation was one glimmering light in the upper window of a humble dwelling across the water, where some poor wretch lay, perhaps at that very moment in his last agonies. Except that one small taper, all was dark and still; not a leaf stirred in the night-wind; the very air was hushed and heavy, and Nature herself seemed at pause.

Rosamond lingered a moment in the garden, awe-struck with the desolation of the scene. She then applied herself to the task of gathering such aromatic herbs as were reckoned powerful against infection; for.the happy wife, the tender mother, knew well the value of the life that she risked. Poor old Reuben, her faithful servant, proved that he also was conscious how precious was that life. Suspecting their destination, he had packed in a little basket such perfumes and cordials, and fragrant gums, as he thought most likely to preserve his fair mistress from the dreaded malady; and when reluctantly obeying her commands, and parting from her at the Abbey Bridge, he had put the basket into her almost unconscious hand, together with a light which he had procured at a cottage by the way-side.

Touched by the old man's affectionate care, which while gathering the herbs she had first

discovered, Rosamond proceeded up the steps to her own old chamber. The door was ajar, and the state of the little apartment, its opened drawers and plundered ornaments, told too plainly that the vague account which by some indirect and untraceable channel had reached Reuben was actually true: that the trusted housekeeper had robbed her indulgent master, incited, it may be, by the cupidity of that trying hour, when every bad impulse sprang into action under the universal demoralization; that the under-drudges had either joined her in the robbery, or had fled from the danger of contagion under the influence of a base and selfish fear; and that her venerable guardian was abandoned, as so many others had been, to the mercy of some brutal watchman, whose only care was to examine once or twice a day whether the wretch whose door he guarded were still alive, and to report his death to the proper authorities.

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All this passed through Rosamond's mind with a loathing abhorrence of the vile ingratitude which had left him who had in the early stage of the pestilence been the guardian angel of the place, to perish alone and unsuccoured. But did not I desert him!" exclaimed she aloud in the bitterness of her heart. "Did not I abandon him!-I, whom he loved so well!" And immediately, attracted perhaps by the sound, which proved that some person was near him, a feeble voice called faintly for "water.' 99

With nervous haste Rosamond filled a jug and hurried to the small chamber-Master Anthony's own chamber- from whence the voice proceeded. The old man lay on the floor, dressed as if just returned from walking, his white head bare and his face nearly hidden by one arm. He still called faintly for water, and drank eagerly of the liquid as she raised that venerable head and held the jug to his lips; then, exhausted with the effort, he sank back on the pillow that she placed for him; and his anxious attendant proceeded to examine his countenance, and to seek on his breast and wrist for the terrible plague-spot, the fatal sign of the disorder.

No such sign was there. Again and again did Rosamond gaze, wiping away her tears, -look searchingly on that pale benevolent face, and inspect the bosom and the arm. Again and again did she feel the feeble pulse and listen to the faint breathing;-again and again did she wipe away her tears of joy. It was exhaustion, inanition, fatigue, weakness, age; it was even sickness, heavy sickness, but not the sickness-not the plague.

Oh, how Rosamond wept and prayed, and blessed God for his mercies during that night's watching! Her venerable patient slept calmly-slept as if he knew that one whom he loved was bending over him; and even in sleep his amendment was perceptible,-his pulse was stronger, his breath ng more free,

and a gentle dew arose on his pale forehead.

As morning dawned—that dawning which in a sick room is often so very sad, but which to Rosamond seemed full of hope and life,-as morning dawned, the good old man awoke and called again for drink. Turning aside her face, she offered him a reviving cordial. He took it; and as he gave back the cup to her trembling hand, he knew that fair and dimpled hand, and the grace of that light figure: although her face was concealed, he knew her: -"Rosamond! It is my Rosamond!"

"Oh! Master Anthony!-dear Master Anthony! Blessings on you for that kind word! It is your own Rosamond! Forgive her!-forgive your own poor child!"

And the blessed tears of reconciliation fell fast from the eyes of both. Never had Master Anthony known so soft, so gentle, so tender a mixture of affection and gratitude. Never had Rosamond, in all the joys of virtuous love, tasted of a felicity so exquisite and so pure. In the course of that morning, the good old Reuben, following, in spite of her prohibition, the track of his beloved mistress, made his way into Master Shawe's dwelling, accompanied by a poor widow whose son had been cured by his skill, and who came to offer her services as his attendant: and in less than a fortnight the whole party, well and happy, were assembled in the great hall of Burnham Manor; Master Anthony with his young namesake on his knee, and Richard Tyson, returned from his embassy, dandling and tossing the lovely little girl, whom they all, especially her venerable guardian, pronounced to be the very image of his own fair Rosamond.

OLD DAVID DYKES.

ONE of my earliest recollections in Belford was of an aged and miserable-looking little man, yellow, withered, meagre and bent, who was known by every boy in the place as old David Dykes, and had been popularly distinguished by that epithet for twenty years or more. There was not so wretched an object in the town; and his abode (for, destitute pauper as he seemed, he actually had a habitation to himself) was still more forlorn and deplorable than his personal appearance. The hovel in which he lived was the smallest, dirtiest, dingiest, and most ruinous, of a row of dirty, dingy, ruinous houses, gradually diminishing in height and size, and running down the centre of the Butts, which at one end was divided into two narrow streets by this unsightly and unseemly wedge of tumble-down masonry. Old David's hut consisted of nothing more than one dark, gloomy little room, which served him for a shop; a closet still smaller, behind; and a cock-loft, to which he ascended

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by a ladder, and in no part of which could he stand upright, in the roof.

The shop, was divided into two compartments; one side being devoted to a paltry collection of second-hand clocks and watches, he being by trade a watchmaker,-and the other to a still more beggarly assortment of old clothes, in the purchase and disposal of which he was particularly skilful, beating, although of Christian parentage, all the Jews of the place in their own peculiar art of buying cheap and selling dear. The manner in which he would cry down some half-worn gown or faded waistcoat, offering perhaps about a twentieth of its value, and affecting the most scornful indifference as to the bargain; the lynx-eye with which, looking up through his iron-rimmed spectacles from the clock-spring that he was engaged in cleaning, he would watch the conflict between necessity and indignation in the mind of the unfortunate vender; and then again the way in which, half-an-hour afterwards, he would cajole the dupe with a shilling into buying at five hundred per cent. profit what he had just purchased of the dupe without one,-might have read a lesson in the science of bargainmaking to all Monmouth-street.

At such a moment there was a self-satisfied chuckle in the old wrinkled cheeks, a twinkle in the keen grey eyes which peered up through the old spectacles and the shaggy grey eyebrows, and a clutch of delight in the manner in which the long, lean, trembling fingers closed over the money, which went very far to counteract the impression produced by his wretched appearance. At the moment of a successful deal, when he had gained a little dirty pelf by cheating to right and left, first the miserable seller, then the simple purchaser at such a moment nobody could mistake David Dykes for an object of charity. His very garments (the refuse of his shop, which even his ingenuity could not coax any one else into purchasing) assumed an air of ragged triumph; and his old wig, the only article of luxury—that is to say, the only unnecessary piece of clothing about him, that venerable scratch on which there was hardly hair enough left to tell the colour, actually bristled up with delight. Poor for a certainty David was; but it was poverty of mind, and not of circumstances. The man was a miser. This fact was of course perfectly well known to all his neighbours; and to this recognized and undeniable truth was added a strong suspicion that, in spite of his sordid traffic and apparently petty gains, David Dykes was not only a miser, but a rich miser. He had been the son of a small farmer in the neighbourhood of Belford, and apprenticed to a watchmaker in the town; and when, on the death of his parents, his elder brother had succeeded in the lease and stock, he, just out of his time, had employed the small por40* 3 K

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tion of money which fell to his lot in purchasing and furnishing the identical shop in Middle-row, in which he had continued ever since; and being a clever workman, and abundantly humble and punctual, speedily obtained a very fair share of employment, as the general cleaner and repairer of clocks and watches for half-a-dozen miles round. To this he soon added his successful traffic in second-hand clothes and other articles; and when it is considered that for nearly sixty years he had never been known to miss earning a penny, or to incur the most trifling expense, it may be conceded that they who supposed him well to do in the world, were probably not much. out in their calculations.

His only companion was a fierce and faithful mastiff dog, one of dear Margaret Lane's army of pensioners. David had begged Boxer of her husband when a puppy; and Stephen, then a young man, and always good-natured and unwilling to refuse a neighbour, bestowed the high-blooded animal upon him with such stipulations as to care and food, as evinced his perfect knowledge of the watchmaker's character. "Mind," said Stephen, "that you feed that pup well. Don't think to starve him as you do yourself, for he's been used to good keep, and so have his father and mother before him; and if you've got a notion in your head of his being able to live as you live, upon a potato a day, why I give you fair warning that he won't stand it. Feed him properly, and he'll be a faithful friend, and take care of your shop and your money: but no starvation!" And David promised, intending perhaps to keep his word. But his notions of good feed were so different from Boxer's, that Stephen's misgivings were completely realized. The poor puppy, haggard and empty, found his way to his old master's yard, and catching sight of Mrs. Lane, crept towards her and crouched down at her feet, looking so piteously in her face, and licking the hand with which she patted his rough honest head so imploringly, that Margaret, who never could bear to see any sort of creature in any distress that she could relieve, immediately fetched him a dinner, and stood by whilst he ate it; and, somehow or other, a tacit compact ensued between her and Boxer, that he should live with David Dykes-who, except in the matter of starving, was a kind master,

and come every day to her to be fed. And so it was settled, to the general satisfaction of all parties.

Boxer therefore continued the watchmaker's companion-his only companion: for although he once, in a fit of most unusual self-indulgence, contemplated taking an old woman as his housekeeper, to attend the shop when he went clock-cleaning into the country; light his fire during the very small portion of the year that he allowed himself such a luxury; make his bed—such as it was; cook his din

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