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surable, and such as ought to subject them to close and severe scrutiny, an opinion which might probably have occasioned them to be placed under immediate arrest, but that their arraigners began to fall out among themselves, the civil and the military authorities mutually accusing each other of underhand proceedings, and of usurping a power that did not belong to them. So much bitterness was engendered by this altercation, that they thought more of annoying one another, than of pursuing the fugitive, or inditing his harbourers, so that after an interchange of much taunting and insulting language, they departed to their respective quarters, leaving Hales Court, after all this unprecedented agitation, bustle and turmoil, to its customary silence and serenity.

CHAPTER X.

Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee from this for ever.

LEAR.

It will be recollected that the Countess of Dorchester, on parting from Walter Colyton, had exacted from him, in return for the important revelations she had made, a pledge of honour that he would not seek any angry interview with Lord Sunderland or his myrmidon, the treacherous Seagrave; but consider his hands and his resentment to be both tied up for fourteen days, if she did not sooner release him from his obligation. That kind-hearted woman, who had a real regard for Walter, and saw that he possessed his full share of youth's cholerick rashness, had good and cogent reasons for imposing this restraint upon the first ebullitions of his wrath. Were he to provoke Sunderland by upbraiding him with his baseness, and demanding satisfaction for the insult he had received, she feared that the minister, never very scrupulous, especially where his personal safety was concerned, would either procure his incarceration upon some frivolous pretext, which he had full power to accomplish, or perhaps have recourse to more desperate expedients for getting rid of him. Such was her opinion of the peer's cowardice and treachery, that she thought the latter alternative the most likely to be adopted; nor were these misgivings unsupported by vague rumours of similar acts that had been recently perpetrated, through the instrumentality of the ruffians whom he kept in pay.

Still less could any thing be obtained by calling Seagrave to account, a man, as she had truly stated, almost as much beneath Walter's notice as his employer was above his reach. Even in a victory over a person of this stamp, who was pretty well known to be a creature of Lord Sunderland's, but little honour could be achieved; while there was no small danger in any rencontre with him, for the Captain had proved his strength and prowess, as well as his gladiatorial skill, in various scuffles and engagements with adversaries of all sorts.

Seeing Walter environed with these perils, and fearing that, although she might restrain him for a time, his impetuous indignation would ultimately prompt him to beard the powerful Sunderland, perhaps even in the palace of the sovereign, and thus entail some irremediable calamity upon his own head, it appeared to the Countess that the only way to extricate him from his difficulties, was to effect his immediate removal from London. She knew troops were about to be dispatched with all haste into the west of England, and by whispering into the King's ear the necessity of sending the steadiest and most approved of his soldiers into a province that had so recently shown its disaffection, she procured a detachment of Lord Dover's regiment of Dragoons, including Walter's company, to be substituted for some other that had been previously destined to this service. " My fiery young spark," thought the Countess to herself, " will thus be quickly placed beyond the reach of danger and ruin; in a month his resentment will have time to cool and be forgotten; and, if not, I trust that the traitor Sunderland will by that day be so exposed and disgraced as to deserve contemptuous pity, rather than excite any desire for his farther chastisement. As to his mustachoed myrmidon the Captain,-mi perdoni, he is now a Major,-he must follow his master whichever way he travels, and that can be in no direction except downwards, if either of them means to give the Devil his due."

Delighted at the success of the manœuvre by which she had thus compelled Walter to steer clear of the mischiefs upon which he would have

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