ndance of his laughter, "and I
don't mind if I do."

The stranger poured out a couple of tankards full of wine, and having
offered one to mine host, he took the other himself.

"Loyal Englishmen as we all are," he said, whilst the same humorous
smile played round the corners of his thin lips--"loyal as we are, we
must admit that this at least is one good thing which comes to us from
France."

"Aye! we'll none of us deny that, sir," assented mine host.

"And here's to the best landlord in England, our worthy host, Mr.
Jellyband," said the stranger in a loud tone of voice.

"Hi, hip, hurrah!" retorted the whole company present. Then there was a
loud clapping of hands, and mugs and tankards made a rattling music
upon the tables to the accompaniment of loud laughter at nothing in
particular, and of Mr. Jellyband's muttered exclamations:

"Just fancy ME bein' talked over by any God-forsaken
furriner!--What?--Lud love you, sir, but you do say some queer things."

To which obvious fact the stranger heartily assented. It was certainly
a preposterous suggestion that anyone could ever upset Mr. Jellyband's
firmly-rooted opinions anent the utter worthlessness of the inhabitants
of the whole continent of Europe.

CHAPTER III THE REFUGEES

Feeling in every part of England certainly ran very high at this time
against the French and their doings. Smugglers and legitimate traders
between the French and the English coasts brought snatches of news from
over the water, which made every honest Englishman's blood boil, and
made him long to have "a good go" at those murderers, who had imprisoned
their king and all his family, subjected the queen and the royal
children to every species of indignity, and were even now loudly
demanding the blood of the whole Bourbon family and of every one of its
adherents.

The execution of the Princesse de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette's young
and charming friend, had filled every one in England with unspeakable
horror, the daily execution of scores of royalists of good family, whose
only sin was their aristocratic name, seemed to cry for vengeance to the
whole of civilised Europe.

Yet, with all that, no one dared to interfere. Burke had exhausted all
his eloquence in trying to induce the British Government to fight the
revolutionary government of France, but Mr. Pitt, with characteristic
prudence, did not feel that this country was fit yet to embark
on another arduous and costly war. It