was on the point of retiring to obey the message from the Bishop of Winchester, stopped and looked back. The earl resumed

"This Hubert Neville is the father of the young fellow who has dared to give us both so much trouble."IJA daIC MIX

"Is he alive ?" said Ralph Hanslap, coming close up to the earl, casting, at the same time, one of his keenest heart-searching glances at Sir Amias, who stood trembling like the

aspen.

"He is come, I am informed," replied the earl, "to Windsor."

"Come!" echoed Sir Amias.

Ralph Hanslap again looked at him; and again addressing the earl, said

"And is his master, Lord Edmund, too, alive ?"

"It is so reported. They have been both prisoners these eighteen years in a lone islet on some remote and savage coast of Scotland."

..." You have known it?" said Ralph Hanslap emphatically to his patron.

"This is judgment !" exclaimed the knight, clasping his hands distractedly.

"Then you did know ?" réjoined the earl, thunderstruck at the effect which the news had produced, adding" Is all then that you have so often told me of the Italian lady and her son false ?"

< I'll

"Yes," replied Ralph Hanslap, vouch now for that;" and then he said, with his bitterest accent, to the knight" This is the business for which the Bishop of Winchester wants me," and he immediately' withdrew.

-“Sir Amias de Crosby," said the earl fiercely, "How dared you to make an instrument of me ?".

The tone of this rallied the scattered spirits of Sir Amias. There was in it menace and insult, and the force of habit for a moment mastered the consternation of remorse.

"Dared!" exclaimed Sir Amias; and he added contemptuously-" Because my help was required for your own purposes, my lord. You wished to marry your daughter to Lord Suffolk, and"-----

"Silence!" cried the earl, with a stamp that made the house shake; "your frauds, your perjuries, are too manifest. Miserable

man!"

The transient courage of habit was past, and the sense of conscious guilt overpowered every other feeling. After a short interval the earl added" Have the lady and her son survived the plague?"

Sir Amias made no answer; but looked at him with a colourless countenance, a wandering eye, and a quivering lip.

"I demand to know," said the earl sternly, "if they are yet alive?"

"I know not, I know not," was the answer of Sir Amias, uttered in an accent of al

most idiocy, and still regarding the earl with

VOL. III.

C

the same wild vacancy. At that moment Ralph Hanslap returned in alarm and breathless, followed by several officers of the city.

J

The entrance of these men, whom the knight instantly conceived were come for him again, roused him, and he laid his hand upon his sword with the intention of defending himself; but the Earl of Lincoln seized his arm, and held him till the officers removed the sword. 12

"The lady, and Adonijah the Jew," cried Ralph Hanslap, " are with a crowd at the gates. She is frantic, and says, that last night her son was murdered, and she accuses Sir Amias of the deed.".

"Of that he is innocent," replied the knight, calmly and collectedly, adding, “I knew not till this moment that they were alive." "It is the day of judgment," said Ralph Hanslap. "The graves give up their dead." "I thought, Hanslap, that you were true

to me?" replied Sir Amias, with a voice that expressed the acutest sense of helplessness.

"In all wherein I have been trusted you have ever found me faithful; and had you confided in me that Lord Edmund was not killed, but only a prisoner, perhaps to the peril of my soul I might have even served you in that."

"Have you known, that in all this time Lord Edmund was alive?" inquired the earl with a scowl.

"I have suspected worse," replied Ralph Hanslap; and he made the spirit of Sir Amias quake with the dreadful avidity of his eye.

"Traitor!" exclaimed the knight," and have you been but doubling the chain that has dragged me to this? But of the murder I am guiltless."

A great noise and clamour within the house arose at this moment, and other officers of the city rushed into the gallery.

"Sir Amias is not the person,” cried one