ut don't mistake me, Mr. Osbaldistone; I
say the Government is a good, a gracious, and a just Government; and if
it has hanged one-half of the rebels, poor things, all will acknowledge
they would not have been touched had they staid peaceably at home."

Waiving the discussion of these political questions, I brought back Mr.
Inglewood to his subject, and I found that Diana, having positively
refused to marry any of the Osbaldistone family, and expressed her
particular detestation of Rashleigh, he had from that time begun to cool
in zeal for the cause of the Pretender; to which, as the youngest of six
brethren, and bold, artful, and able, he had hitherto looked forward as
the means of making his fortune. Probably the compulsion with which he
had been forced to render up the spoils which he had abstracted from my
father's counting-house by the united authority of Sir Frederick Vernon
and the Scottish Chiefs, had determined his resolution to advance his
progress by changing his opinions and betraying his trust. Perhaps
also--for few men were better judges where his interest was concerned--he
considered their means and talents to be, as they afterwards proved,
greatly inadequate to the important task of overthrowing an established
Government. Sir Frederick Vernon, or, as he was called among the
Jacobites, his Excellency Viscount Beauchamp, had, with his daughter,
some difficulty in escaping the consequences of Rashleigh's information.
Here Mr. Inglewood's information was at fault; but he did not doubt,
since we had not heard of Sir Frederick being in the hands of the
Government, he must be by this time abroad, where, agreeably to the cruel
bond he had entered into with his brother-in-law, Diana, since she had
declined to select a husband out of the Osbaldistone family, must be
confined to a convent. The original cause of this singular agreement Mr.
Inglewood could not perfectly explain; but he understood it was a family
compact, entered into for the purpose of securing to Sir Frederick the
rents of the remnant of his large estates, which had been vested in the
Osbaldistone family by some legal manoeuvre; in short, a family compact,
in which, like many of those undertaken at that time of day, the feelings
of the principal parties interested were no more regarded than if they
had been a part of the live-stock upon the lands.

I cannot tell,--such is the waywardness of the human heart,--whether this
intelligence gave me joy or