talked loudly of the horror, the infamy, and the shamefulness, of making
the King's Highway a place of general toll and contribution; but still
they abstained most scrupulously from taking any notice of gentlemen who
were out late upon the road, especially if they went on horseback.



CHAPTER VI.

It was about two days after the period of which we have spoken, when the
Earl of Sunbury, caring very little for the loss he had met with on the
road, and thinking of it merely as one of those unpleasant circumstances
which occur to every man now and then, sat in his library with every
sort of comfort and splendour about him, enjoying in dignified ease the
society of mighty spirits from the past, in those works which have given
and received an earthly immortality. His hand was upon Sallust; and
having just been reading the awful lines which present in Catiline the
type of almost every great conspirator, he raised his eyes and gazed on
vacancy, calling up with little labour, as it were, a substantial image
to his mind's eye of him whom the great historian had displayed.

The hour was about nine o'clock at night, and the windows were closed,
when suddenly a loud ringing of the bell made itself heard, even in the
Earl's library. As the person who came, by applying at the front
entrance, evidently considered himself a visitor of the Earl, that
nobleman placed his hand upon the open page of the book and waited for a
farther announcement with a look of vexation, muttering to himself,
"This is very tiresome: I thought, at all events, I should have had a
few days of tranquillity and repose."