d elsewhere. We talked of his selling her
estates for the purchase of arms and the enemy--as many as she had money
for. We discussed it as a matter of business. She had bewitched him: and
would again, I don't doubt, if she were here to repeat the dose. But in
the interim his father dies, he inherits; and he enters Parliament, and
now, mind you, the man who solemnly calculated her chances and speculates
on the transmission of rifled arms of the best manufacture and latest
invention by his yacht and with his loads of rails, under the noses of
the authorities, like a master rebel, and a chivalrous gentleman to boot,
pooh poohs the whole affair. You saw him. Grave as an owl, the dead
contrary of his former self!'

'I thought I heard you approve him,' said Philip.

'And I do. But the poor girl has ordered her estates to be sold to cast
the die, and I 'm taking the view of her disappointment, for she believes
he can do anything; and if I know the witch, her sole comfort lying in
the straw is the prospect of a bloody venture for a throne. The truth is,
to my thinking, it's the only thing she has to help her to stomach her
husband.'

'But it's rank idiocy to suppose she can smuggle cannon!' cried Philip.

'But that man Mattock's not an idiot and he thought she could. And it 's
proof he was under a spell. She can work one.'

'The country hasn't a port.'

'Round the Euxine and up the Danube, with the British flag at the stern.
I could rather enjoy the adventure. And her prince is called for. He's
promised a good reception when he drops down the river, they say. A bit
of a scrimmage on the landing-pier may be, and the first field or two,
and then he sits himself, and he waits his turn. The people change their
sovereigns as rapidly as a London purse. Two pieces of artillery and two
or three hundred men and a trumpet alter the face of the land there.
Sometimes a trumpet blown by impudence does it alone. They're
enthusiastic for any new prince. He's their Weekly Journal or Monthly
Magazine. Let them make acquaintance with Adiante Adister, I'd not swear
she wouldn't lay fast hold of them.'

Philip signalled to his driver, and Captain Con sang out his dinner-hour
for a reminder to punctuality, thoughtful of the feelings of his wife.

CHAPTER XII

MISS MATTOCK

Mrs. Adister O'Donnell, in common with her family, had an extreme dislike
of the task of composing epistles, due to the circumstance that she was
unable, unaide