his strange acquaintance Green:  he recollected that on that very night he was to meet the Colonel; he recollected that the very object of that meeting was to be the Duke; he remembered that Green’s words had been, “to apply to him in any difficulty, for that he had more power to do him a service than ever;” he recollected that the very person he was to see possessed some knowledge of his own history; and hope, out of these materials, however incoherent, strange, and unpromising they might be, contrived to elicit at least one ray of light.

“I will meet him,” he thought; “I will meet him, and will do the best that I can when I do see him.  I must not allude to what I have heard; but he may have power that I do not know of, he may even aid me in some other plan for the Duke’s escape.  I will set out as soon as it is dusk.”

As he thus thought, he turned towards the door, nearly forgetting the letter which the Earl had given him to copy; but his eye chanced to fall upon it as he passed, and saying aloud, “This man shall not see how he has shaken me,” he sat down, and copied it clearly and accurately.  He then left the house, went home, ordered his horse, and made preparations for his journey.  The sun was just touching the horizon as he put his foot in the stirrup, and he rode forward at a quick pace on the road towards Somersbury.

It was a beautiful clear evening, and many people were abroad; but for the first six miles he saw nobody but strangers, all hurrying to their several destinations for the night, travellers wending their way into the great metropolis, and carts carrying to its devouring maw the food for the next day.  Between the sixth and seventh milestone, however, where the moon was just seen raising her yellow horn beside the village spire, he beheld a man mounted upon a powerful horse, riding towards him, who by his military aspect, broad shoulders, powerful frame, and erect seat upon his horse, he recognised, while still at some distance, as Green.

“Ah Wilton, my boy,” cried the Colonel, as he rode up, “I am glad to see you.—­You are not behind your time, but there is an impatience upon me now that made me set off early.  I am glad I did, for I have not been on my horse’s back for a fortnight; and there is something in poor Barbary’s motion that gives me back a part of my former lightness of heart.”

“I wish to Heaven that you could get it all back,” replied Wilton.  “But I fear when it is lost it is not to be regained—­I feel that it is so, but too bitterly, at this moment.”

“What you!” exclaimed the Colonel.  “What is the matter, Wilton?  What have you done? for a man never loses his lightness of heart for ever, but by his own act?”

“I think,” said Wilton, “from what I have heard you say, that you can feel for my situation, when I tell you, that, by the entanglements of one I do not scruple to call a most accursed villain, I can neither go on with honour in the course that is before me, nor retreat without dishonour; and even if I could do either, there would still be absolute and perpetual misery for me in life.”