of obedience, you could openly avow our engagement to Mr. Mansell, I
own that I should feel that we were not drawn into a compromise of
sincerity. What this costs me I will not say; it will be bare
existence till we meet at Scarborough.
'Your own, J. E. F. D.'


Having written this and deposited it in the Ebbscreek post-office,
James bethought himself that his submissive cousin had thrown himself
on the floor, with his bag for a pillow, trying to make the most of
the few moments of rest before the midnight journey. Seized with
compunction, James exclaimed, 'There, old fellow, we will stay to-
night.'

'Thank you--' He was too sleepy for more.

The delay was recompensed. James was trying to persuade Louis to
rouse himself to be revived by bread-and-cheese and beer, and could
extort nothing but a drowsy repetition of the rhyme, in old days the
war-cry of the Grammar-school against the present headmaster,--


'The Welshman had liked to be choked by a mouse,
But he pulled him out by the tail,'--


when an alarum came in the shape of a little grinning boy from
Beauchastel, with a note on which James had nearly laid hands, as he
saw the writing, though the address was to the Viscount Fitzjocelyn.