Lord Rochester hearing this, had but one chance left for his life; he resolved to confide his fate to the inn-keeper, although he had the character of a determined Roundhead. Whether in this he thought the Roundheads and bawlers for liberty were more generous and compassionate, or more mercenary and traitorous than other men, may be doubtful; but his lordship's penetration in this instance was justified.

Sending for the man, he told him he would put his life into his hands, which he might destroy or preserve; that he could get nothing by the one, but by the other he should have profit, and the good-will of many friends who might do him good. Then he told him who he was, and as an earnest of more benefit, gave him thirty or forty jacobuses, and a fair gold chain that was worth a hundred pounds.

Whether the man was moved by the reward, or by generosity, or by foresight, (for he was a man of very good understanding, and might consider the changes which followed afterwards,) he resolved to permit their escape, and though he thought himself bound to account to the justice for their horses, he supplied them with two others as good, and a trusty servant to shew them the way.*

Lady Bracebridge has here departed, it is presumed, from the exact words of Lord Ormond, as these latter sentences are almost verbatim from Clarendon.

This was as providential, seemingly, for the young Penruddock as for themselves; for had they been arrested, no communication could have been made to Bertram's relations, whose house was searched for the child but four-and-twenty hours after he had been again removed by the order of Lord Rochester.

That nobleman having got to London, found the physician Quartermain, who had the address, without discovery, to assist all the Royalists of that time who were of any degree; and having, moreover, been the college friend of both the departed Penruddocks, he was moved with the greatest sympathy for the devoted child, and easily fell into Lord Rochester's proposal, to give him an asylum at his house at Rockcliff, on the Sussex coast, if he could be enabled to reach it in safety. This Lord Rochester undertook, through the medium of a zealous royalist follower whom he had left in London, and who, from the spirit which actuated both parties at the time, undertook and performed the task, though, for greater security, he made the journey to Yorkshire on foot.

The sister of Bertram's brother-in-law, another determined, because deeply-suffering loyalist, whose husband had been gibbeted by Cromwell's orders, even courted the task of conducting the forlorn infant through so long a journey. Lord Rochester's

messenger, therefore, and herself, in a small cart supplied them by her brother, and under the semblance of man and wife with their child, in the coarsest habiliments, but still accompanied by the critical mail trunk, providentially passed through all difficulties, and reached the good and staunch Quartermain's house at Rockliff in safety.

Thus far the hearsay evidence produced by Lord Ormond, and permitted for the nonce by the judge, though not by the law, to be read. This was partly owing to the reacting spirit of the times, partly to the necessity of the case, from the impossibility of producing direct testimony: for all the witnesses of whom mention has been made were dead, except Darcy, whose evidence was given, and, as far as it went, was thought most important (indeed convincing), as to the fact of the orphan's departure with Bertram from the hall. Bertram himself deserved a better fate; for being suspected, as we see not without reason, of having subtracted a child of a malignant from the vigilance of government, he was thrown into prison, where he perished from illness and neglect.

The rest of the case was, however, legally clear, from the oral testimony of Quartermain and Lord Ormond; the latter of whom proved that he had taken the young Penruddock with him to Namur; had there delivered him to the governor; had twice

or thrice seen him at the convent; and identified him now in open court to be the same interesting child he had first seen at Rockcliff.

The consequence was, the instant finding of the jury, under the direction of the judge, and amid shouts of applause from the spectators, that this once abandoned orphan was the true heir of Penruddock.

LETTER XII.

Strickland to Fitzwalter.

REMARKS.

Lincoln's-Inn.

Do you know that I am charmed! Your narrative is a stirring romance, and had I Penruddock's descent, with such an adventure in my house, it would make me an aristocrat too. It might be added to the next edition of the Causes Célèbres. What a scope for the counsel! I do not wish to have been near two centuries dead and buried; but I cannot help thinking I should have liked to have conducted the case for the boy plaintiff. It also makes me a proselyte to your new maxim of nil admirari; for, after so lost a case, to be so restored, who can wonder at any thing? Yet I cannot help wishing to know something of the heir's after-life. Let me see; he must have been alive at the Revolution, and, I suppose, was hugely loyal to James. What then became of the conditional