a country, with his home-bred, and
quite likely _provincial_ notions thick upon him, is competent to
describe, with due discrimination, even the usages of which he is
actually a witness. This truth all the family came, in time, to
discover; and while it rendered them more strictly critical in their
remarks, it also rendered them more tolerant. As it was, few happier
families were to be found in the British empire, than that of Sir
Wycherly Wychecombe; its head retaining his manly and protecting
affection for all dependent on him, while his wife, beautiful as a
matron, as she had been lovely as a girl, clung to him with the tenacity
of the vine to its own oak.

Of the result of the rising in the north, it is unnecessary to say much.
The history of the _Chevalier's_ successes in the first year, and of his
final overthrow at Culloden, is well known. Sir Reginald Wychecombe,
like hundreds of others, played his cards so skilfully that he avoided
committing himself; and, although he lived and eventually died a
suspected man, he escaped forfeitures and attainder. With Sir Wycherly,
as the head of his house, he maintained a friendly correspondence to the
last, even taking charge of the paternal estate in its owner's absence;
manifesting to the hour of his death, a scrupulous probity in matters of
money, mingled with an inherent love of management and intrigue, in
things that related to politics and the succession. Sir Reginald lived
long enough to see the hopes of the Jacobites completely extinguished,
and the throne filled by a native Englishman.

Many long years after the events which rendered the week of its opening
incidents so memorable among its actors, must now be imagined. Time had
advanced with its usual unfaltering tread, and the greater part of a
generation had been gathered to their fathers. George III. had been on
the throne not less than three lustrums, and most of the important
actors of the period of '45, were dead;--many of them, in a degree,
forgotten. But each age has its own events and its own changes. Those
colonies, which in 1745 were so loyal, so devoted to the house of
Hanover, in the belief that political and religious liberty depended on
the issue, had revolted against the supremacy of the parliament of the
empire. America was already in arms against the mother country, and the
very day before the occurrence of the little scene we are about to
relate, the intelligence of the battle of Bunker Hill had