“Here’s an account of this great event of the day, which of course you heard as you came here.  This is a proof how things are brought about unexpectedly.  Not a man in England, statesman or mechanic, could have imagined, for the last six weeks, that this dark, cold-blooded plotter, Sir John Fenwick, had failed to effect his escape.”

“And has he not?” exclaimed Wilton, eagerly.  “Is he in England?  Has he been found?”

“He has not escaped,” replied the Earl, dryly.  “He is in England; and he is at the present moment safe in Newgate.  Some spies or other officers of the Duke of Shrewsbury dis covered him lingering about in Kent and Sussex, and he has since been apprehended, in attempting to escape into France.”

“This is indeed great intelligence,” replied Wilton.  “I suppose there is no chance whatever of his being acquitted.”

“None,” answered the Earl; “none whatever, if they manage the matter rightly, though he is more subtle than all the rest of the men put together.  It seems likely that the whole business will fall upon me, and I shall see him in a few days; for he already talks of giving information against great persons, on condition that his life be spared.”

Wilton concealed any curiosity he might feel as well as he could, and went on with the usual occupations of the day, not remarking as anything particular, that the Earl wrote a long and seemingly tedious letter, and gave it to one of the porters, with orders to send it off by a special messenger.

On going out afterwards, he found that the tidings of Sir John Fenwick’s arrest had spread over the whole town; and the rumour, agitation, and anxiety which had been caused by the plot, and had since subsided, was, for the time, revived with more activity than ever.  As no one, however, was mentioned in any of the rumours but Sir John Fenwick himself, Wilton did not think it worth while to make the mind of the Duke anxious upon the subject till he could obtain farther information; and he therefore refrained from writing, as it was now the middle of the week, and his visit was to be renewed on the Saturday following.  A day passed by without the matter being any farther cleared up; but on the Friday, when Wilton visited the Earl at his own house, he found him reading his letters with a very cloudy brow, which however, grew brighter soon after he appeared.

Wilton found that some painful conversation must have taken place between the Earl and his son; for Lord Sherbrooke was seated in the opposite chair, with one of those listless and indifferent looks upon his countenance which he often assumed during grave discussions, to cover, perhaps, deeper matter within his own breast.  The Earl, though a little irritable, seemed not angry; and after he had concluded the reading of his letters, he said, “I must answer all these tiresome epistles myself, Wilton:  for the good people who wrote them have so contrived it, in order, I suppose, to spare you, and make me work myself.  I shall not need your aid to-day, then; and, indeed, I do not see why you should not go down to Somersbury at once, if you like it; only be up at an early hour on Monday morning.—­Sherbrooke, I wish you would take yourself away:  it makes me angry to see you twisting that paper up into a thousand forms like a mountebank at a fair.”