himself in his prison, had complimented him
highly on his services in the Imperial army, only regretting that
they had not been on behalf of his own country, and had assured him
of equal, if not superior rank, in the British army if he would join
it on the liberation that he might reckon upon in the course of a
very few days.

"How did you work on the unhappy young man to bring about this
blessed change?" asked the Doctor.

"Oh, sir, I do not think it was myself. It was first the mercy of
the Almighty, and then my blessed mother's holy memory working on
him, revived by the sight of myself. I cannot describe to you how
gentle, and courteous, and respectful he was to me all along, though
I am sure those dreadful men mocked at him for it. Do you know
whether his father has heard?"

"Robert Oakshott is gone in search of him. He had set off to beat
up the country, good old man, to obtain signatures to the petition
in favour of our prisoner, and Robert expected to find him with Mr.
Chute at the Vine. It is much to that young man's credit, niece, he
was so eager to see his brother that he longed to come with me
himself; but he thought that the shock to his father would be so
great that he ought to bear the tidings himself. And what do you
think his good wife is about? Perhaps you did not know that Sedley
Archfield brought away jail fever with him, and Mrs. Oakshott,
feeling that she was the cause by her hasty action, has taken
lodgings for him in Winchester, and is nursing him like a sister.
No. You need not fear for your colonel, my dear maid. Sedley
caught the infection because he neither was, nor wished to be,
secluded from the rest of the prisoners, some of whom were, I fear,
only too congenial society to him. But now tell me the story of
your own deliverance, which seems to me nothing short of
miraculous."

The visit of the Portsmouth surgeon only confirmed Peregrine's own
impression that it was impossible that he should live, and he was
only surviving by the strong vitality in his little, spare, wiry
frame. Dr. Woodford, after hearing Anne's story, thought it well to
ask him whether he would prefer the ministrations of a Roman
Catholic priest; but whether justly or unjustly, Peregrine seemed to
impute to that Church the failure to exorcise the malignant spirit
which had led him to far worse aberrations than he had confessed to
Anne. Though by no means deficient in knowledge or controversian
theology,