raved at such a rate about the young
lady, that all the owners began to be shy of him: and the end of it
was, that Captain le----what's his name?--has been put in his room."

"Captain Jackson you mean," said the landlord, "for that's his real
name; aye, it's true enough that Jackson has now got the command."

"Well, but mad or not mad, what became of Nicholas after the Bow-street
officers had laid hold of him? Mr. Dulberry, you had the paper: what
became of him? Clapt into a post-chaise for London, eh?"

"No, sir: with all their plots, it seems government couldn't make
sure of catching him on the Cato-street business: witnesses couldn't
be bought, or juries couldn't be packed, I suppose: and so they've
sent him to this part of the country; and he's to take his trial at
Dolgelly or Carnarvon for some old affairs, God knows what, with the
Custom-house or the Blazer."

"God bless me!" exclaimed almost every man in the room, "so then we
shall see Edward Nicholas once more; and I'll walk fifty miles rather
than miss the sight. And which way does he come, Mr. Dulberry?"

"By sea, gentlemen; they shipped him on board the steam-packet Halcyon;
and God, in his mercy, grant that this cursed instrument of despotic
power may blow up and deliver so good a patriot from their snares!"

"The Halcyon!" exclaimed Bertram, with a vehemence proportioned to his
sudden surprise and the interest which by this time he felt in the
subject of the conversation--"The Halcyon! Why then, Mr. Dulberry, your
prayer is granted: for the Halcyon blew up two days ago in St. George's
Channel; somewhere, I believe, off the Isle of Anglesea: _I_ was one of
the passengers; and, to the best of my belief, all on board have
perished--except myself."

In Lloyd's coffee-house, or other places of great resort in London,
when a placard is exhibited reporting any important news, the
restlessness of public impatience seems often as though it would extort
an answer to its further curiosity from the inanimate pillar or post to
which the placard is affixed: it may be supposed how much more liable
to such importunity is the bearer of a placard that happens to be no
stone pillar but a living man. Bertram was pressed upon from all sides
for his narrative of the catastrophe, which he gave in substance as the
reader has already heard it. Of Nicholas, whom he now understood to
have been his fellow-passenger, he knew nothing: that some state
prisoner, of extraordinary ch