those of his opponent, were disposed to vote for him; and if Sir Blake was preceded by a banner bearing, "Whitmore and cheap sugar. The cause for which Hampden died upon the field and Sidney on the scaffold," Mr. Goodenough had the more pithy and intelligible motto of "Goodenough and Independence. No place-hunters." In this posture of affairs a power suddenly appeared which at once changed the features of the future. A gentleman named Mr. Cicero Rabbits, and claiming for himself the title of "the Farmers' Friend," was announced as a candidate. He was a man more suited to many of Mr. Goodenough's supporters than Mr. Goodenough himself; and he spoilt that gentleman's game without winning his own.

Sir Blake, having gained his election by a slender majority, paid the visit, which he had long intended, to his friends at Stoke.

His invitation was from Henry; and he was glad to find that Mrs. Pigott and her daughter were now staying at Abbey Grange, for it was a place where he could visit them with much pleasanter recollections than at Knight's Carey.

His host had very little trouble in amusing him. Every morning after breakfast, unless some special engagement interfered, Sir Blake drove Mary and her child in her pony-phaeton to Abbey Grange, and the afternoon was generally far advanced before they returned.

On one of these occasions, as they drew up at Mrs. Pigott's gate, Mary took the reins, saying, "I must leave you and Henry here. I have some shopping to attend to at Stoke, and will call for you in about two hours."

The boy had been delivered over to his grandmother; and Blake and Helen were talking of the past with even greater interest than usual. At last, after some pause, "I scarcely know," he resumed, "whether it is right to say so, but I think, Helen, that we are both aware that mine is not merely the attachment arising from early intercourse. I feel that my greatest happiness would be in devoting my heart and fortunes to yours, and I offer them to you with the same plain sincerity with which we have always spoken to each other."

"I know, dear Blake," said Helen, "that there has long been such a feeling on your part; and oh! how happy I should be if I could meet it

as it deserves !"

"And why should you not?" he inquired.

"Because," replied Helen, "though I regard you as I have always done with admiration and respect, and-I need not be ashamed to say— with the deepest affection, I feel that we can never be more than the attached friends which we are at this moment."

"It is with no feeling of mortified vanity, Helen, that I say you surprise me. If you regard me as you tell me that you do, why should we

be no more than friends ?"

"I am not worthy of you, and I would not disgrace you. I would not sully the fame that so certainly awaits you."

"Not worthy of me! You, Helen! for Heaven's sake what can you mean? What can make you think so?"

"The same cause which made me consent to marry Sir Jonah Foster. My father was dishonoured, Blake; a criminal, though an unproclaimed one."

"Do you allude to the papers connected with Cubleigh? Is it pos

sible that Sir Jonah could have brought them forward to compel your consent to his wishes ?"

"Not himself, but through Henry; and he said that no one else was acquainted with our parent's guilt."

"There, at least, that self-degraded man spoke sincerely. He was not aware that it was known to one who has no secrets with his sou; and Sir Jonah, believing that the knowledge rested with himself alone, thus wickedly called up the spectre of the past to aid him in his evil purposes." "But my father was guilty, Blake?"

"He was in Sir Roger's debt; the forgery was suggested by Sir Roger himself to enable your father to repay him; but it was detected in time to be hushed up, and the papers were kept by the Fosters to give them a power which Sir Jonah must have known that he could not publicly employ without disclosing his own father's part in that disreputable transaction. I do not palliate it; but it is not for poor humanity to visit the sins of the parent upon the children, even if Mr. Pigott had not been more the victim than the culprit. Oh, Helen! had I known that Sir Jonah was using such influence over yourself, how much misery we should both have been spared! If this is the only obstacle," he continued, pressing her tenderly to his heart, "you are still my dear, dear Helen." And when he fondly kissed her, she buried her face between her hands, and leaning upon his breast, she wept.

At the same moment the pony-phaeton again drew up at the gate. Sir Blake was requested to seek young Henry, who was playing before his grandmother in the garden; and in that brief interval Mary was made acquainted with the new relationship in which he was placed with her friend.

She was in exuberant spirits while driving homewards, and spoke of nothing but Helen's kindness, her charities, her affection for Mary herself, and those high qualities of mind to which she referred for guidance on all occasions of doubt or difficulty.

"Have the goodness, Mrs. Pigott, to let me take the reins," said Sir Blake, smiling; "this is not the first time that you have nearly driven us against the footpath, and, fond as I am of law, I have no wish to be the subject of a crowner's quest.'

They reached Knight's Carey, however, without an accident.

Henry came home late to dinner, as usual; and his wife ran up immediately to his dressing-room.

"You need not trouble yourself," he said, as she tapped at the door; "I shall be down directly. I was obliged to stay till we had come to a decision; it was a very peculiar case; but you shall hear all about it at dinner."

"There's no doubt of that," thought Mary.

But she persevered in first telling him what had happened; and she was glad to see that it gave him pleasure.

It is strange how these things are known to the servants of a family long before they are told to them. There must be an invisible system of electric telegraph. "Oh! Master Blake," cried Mrs. Pigott's old servant, Ann, the next time she opened the door to him at Abbey Grange, "I'm so glad! But, Lord! I oughtn't to call you Master Blake now that you are riz to be such a great man!"

"I hope that you, at least, will never call me anything else, Ann," replied Blake, as he passed her; and soon, in sweet converse with Helen, the world beside was forgotten.

"And now," inquired Mary, one morning after breakfast, "why should not we have our sail across the bay?"

'Why not, indeed!" said Blake.

"I have no doubt that I could have the boat." And, the same evening, a very polite note from its owner requested "Sir Blake Whitmore would consider it entirely at his disposal, as long as he remained in this part of the country."

Again, therefore, their preparations were made; and this time there was nothing to cloud their happiness.

Remembering the termination of their former attempt, Mary reproached herself for having thoughtlessly proposed the excursion; and suggested that-for some seemingly sufficient reason-they should not embark from Stoke but from a bay to the westward; and they were soon bounding across its waters.

Young Henry accompanied them; and his enjoyment seemed to Mary to be an assurance that her own was a healthy feeling.

"Why has not papa a boat?" asked Henry.

"Because he does not like it."

"But won't he buy me one?"

"Now listen, Henry," said Whitmore. "If you will always attend to what your mamma says, and learn your lessons, and never be naughty or vex her, I will myself buy you a boat like this."

"That's a great deal to remember," answered the boy; "but I will try."

"You could not answer better. If we would only try, Henry, we should all do well."

"I see the pony-phaeton is waiting for us," said Mary, as they returned. "You must drive Helen to Abbey Grange, and I and my young sailor will join you there in half an hour."

But to the ponies, as they pawed the ground before Mrs. Pigott's gate, the half hour was a very long one.

When the "great event" was made known to that excellent but not very intellectual lady, she expressed her approbation, and hoped that, as Sir Blake Whitmore had now grown older, he had given up some of his extraordinary opinions.

"Not one of them, I trust," said Helen. "I should be sorry if he gave up one of them!"

Feeling that something more than a written announcement of his plans was due to Mr. Fairfield, Sir Blake went to London a few days later to communicate them, and found the same kind consideration that had marked their intercourse from the first moment they had met.

Mr. Fairfield said that he was fully prepared for all he told him, and would superintend their law arrangements himself. You cannot," he continued, "settle less than twenty thousand pounds upon your wife, with the usual conditions, and I will be one of your trustees."

"I am happy to think," replied Blake, "that she trusts for her future comforts to my exertions and success, and she shall not be disappointed; but, at present, I have not any acquisitions worth the trouble and delay of a settlement."

"Twenty thousand pounds in the Three per Cent. Consolidated Annuities, standing in the names of the said trustees.' That," said Mr. Fairfield, is the way in which the deed will run; and, as one of the said trustees,' I shall of course take care that the money is invested. I shall not make myself liable by my own negligence, depend upon it, Sir Blake."

"It is impossible," said Whitmore, "to mistake your kind intentions; but I feel that I ought not to incur such an obligation even from you." "Blake," resumed Mr. Fairfield, "do not deprive an old man of his pleasant fancies. They are all that is now left to me; and if I cannot regard you as my son, I am childless indeed."

"My friend-my second father," said Blake, "you must not misunderstand me; but it is difficult to yield to all your wishes without appearing to encroach upon your kindness."

On his return to Stoke he was accompanied by Mr. Fairfield, who became the guest, by his own choice, of his old correspondent, Mr. Whitmore.

Like the temporary abode of royalty, the house was often watched by an idle group, anxious to get a sight of "the gentleman from London" who was said to have made Blake Whitmore wealthy: and, on one of these occasions, there was amongst the gazers the bilious juryman-a small draper and tailor-who had been so ready to pronounce upon Sir Jonah Foster's guilt on his trial at Ilbury.

"He looks very like an old simpleton," said the draper, as Mr. Fairfield made his appearance.

Now this was an unfortunate remark; the aspersion of Mr. Fairfield's intellectualities being so flatly and unceremoniously contradicted by young Bumphy, a son of the constable, an aspiring liberal and great admirer of Sir Blake Whitmore, that the difference in opinion could only be adjusted by six rounds of hard hitting in the stable-yard of the Dove.

As impartial historians we are bound to admit that the tailor, though a small man and not in first-rate condition, did not fight badly; but he was no match for the pluck and activity of young Bumphy, who was carried home in triumph amidst loud cries of "Green for ever!" very much to the horror and scandal of his father, who considered his own official dignity compromised by such an exhibition on the part of the son, to whom he looked forward as his probable successor. Bumphy, junior-a constable in posse―with a black eye, and cheered on by a rabblerout, seemed to his father as great an inconsistency as the lord chancellor on the woolsack in a coalheaver's hat.

During the time thus occupied, preparations for the wedding were in full activity. The bride-cakes were entrusted to the skill and experience of Mrs. Patience Good; and Miss Emma Larkin was again rejoiced at being invited as one of the bridesmaids; though she could not, "for her part, understand why the same compliment should be paid to Miss Camp." It certainly involved a very nice point in precedence; for Miss Emma was the daughter of a retired tradesman from London, while the father of Miss Camp had been a tradesman in the place where he now officiated as a magistrate.

THE BONFIRE AT TEMPLE-BAR.

Sung by a party of merry fellows, dressed in greasy crimson and yellow satin, as they lean out of the window of a Fleet-street tavern, May, 1660.

WITH a flagon in each hand,
And a bowl before us,
While the barrel's running gold,
Cavaliers, the chorus !
Lest misfortune enter here,

Let us now debar her,
Tossing off Canary cups
With a Sassarara!

Through the lattice see the west
Like a burning ruby;
Who to-night goes sober hence
Shall be dubbed a booby.
Redder than that core of fire

Flash the gathered torches,
Blaze the bonfires in the streets
Round a thousand porches.

Full cups round, my hearts of steel,
Lads of trusty mettle;

Split the chair and break the form,
Chop in two the settle;

So the bonfire, roof-tree high,

Leap up to the steeple,

While with waving hat and swords
We address the people.

Burn the books of crop-eared Prynn,
Make the Roundheads shiver;
Give a shout to scare the rogues
Right across the river.
Blow the organ trumpet loud,
Set the mad bells clashing,
Redden all the stones of Cheap
With the wine-cup's splashing.
Traitors who to-night retire
Cheek unflushed and sober,
I'll drench with this metal can
Of the brown October.
Drain the tun, yes, every drop,

Then split up the barrel,
Beat the pewter till it's flat,
Chorus to the carol.

Cavaliers upon your knees,
Here's a health to heroes;

Jenkin, when I give the sign,
Fire the patarreros.

Blow the trumpets till they burst,
Welcome to the Stuart,

Slit his weasand who will dare

To say he's not a true heart.