this is my ground."--Peveril of the Peak.


One night on returning home from a party at Lady Westborough's in
Hanover Square, Clarence observed a man before him walking with an
uneven and agitated step. His right hand was clenched, and he
frequently raised it as with a sudden impulse, and struck fiercely as
if at some imagined enemy.

The stranger slackened his pace. Clarence passed him, and, turning
round to satisfy the idle curiosity which the man's eccentric gestures
had provoked, his eye met a dark, lowering, iron countenance, which,
despite the lapse of four years, he recognized on the moment: it was
Wolfe, the republican.

Clarence moved, involuntarily, with a quicker step; but in a few
minutes, Wolfe, who was vehemently talking to himself, once more
passed him; the direction he took was also Clarence's way homeward,
and he therefore followed the republican, though at some slight
distance, and on the opposite side of the way. A gentleman on foot,
apparently returning from a party, met Wolfe, and, with an air half
haughty, half unconscious, took the wall; though, according to old-
fashioned rules of street courtesy, he was on the wrong side for
asserting the claim. The stern republican started, drew himself up to
his full height, and sturdily and doggedly placed himself directly in
the way of the unjust claimant. Clarence was now nearly opposite to
the two, and saw all that was going on.

With a motion a little rude and very contemptuous, the passenger
attempted to put Wolfe aside, and win his path. Little did he know of