this matter an eagerness whilk, although it ariseth
doubtless from love to your best interests here and hereafter, for the
man is of persecuting blood, and himself a persecutor, a Cavalier
or Malignant, and a scoffer, who hath no inheritance in Jesse;
nevertheless, we are commanded to do justice unto all, and to fulfil
our bond and covenant, as well to the stranger as to him who is in
brotherhood with us. Wherefore myself, even I myself, will be aiding
unto the delivery of your letter to the man Edgar Ravenswood, trusting
that the issue therof may be your deliverance from the nets in which he
hath sinfully engaged you. And that I may do in this neither more nor
less than hath been warranted by your honourable parents, I pray you
to transcribe, without increment or subtraction, the letter formerly
expeded under the dictation of your right honourable mother; and I shall
put it into such sure course of being delivered, that if, honourable
young madam, you shall receive no answer, it will be necessary that
you conclude that the man meaneth in silence to abandon that naughty
contract, which, peradventure, he may be unwilling directly to restore."

Lucy eagerly embraced the expedient of the worthy divine. A new letter
was written in the precise terms of the former, and consigned by Mr.
Bide-the-Bent to the charge of Saunders Moonshine, a zealous elder of
the church when on shore, and when on board his brig as bold a smuggler
as ever ran out a sliding bowsprit to the winds that blow betwixt
Campvere and the east coast of Scotland. At the recommendation of his
pastor, Saunders readily undertook that the letter should be securely
conveyed to the Master of Ravenswood at the court where he now resided.

This retrospect became necessary to explain the conference betwixt Miss
Ashton, her mother, and Bucklaw which we have detailed in a preceding
chapter.

Lucy was now like the sailor who, while drifting through a tempestuous
ocean, clings for safety to a single plank, his powers of grasping it
becoming every moment more feeble, and the deep darkness of the night
only checkered by the flashes of lightning, hissing as they show the
white tops of the billows, in which he is soon to be engulfed.

Week crept away after week, and day after day. St. Jude's day arrived,
the last and protracted term to which Lucy had limited herself, and
there was neither letter nor news of Ravenswood.

CHAPTER XXXII.

How fair these names, h