indecent severity and haste upon this occasion;
and rumour took care to make the usual additions to the reality. It was
currently reported, that the desperate Cavalier, Peveril of the
Peak, had fallen on a Presbyterian congregation, while engaged in the
peaceable exercise of religion, with a band of armed men--had slain
some, desperately wounded many more, and finally pursued the preacher to
his vicarage which he burned to the ground. Some alleged the clergyman
had perished in the flames; and the most mitigated report bore, that he
had only been able to escape by disposing his gown, cap, and band,
near a window, in such a manner as to deceive them with the idea of his
person being still surrounded by flames, while he himself fled by the
back part of the house. And although few people believed in the extent
of the atrocities thus imputed to our honest Cavalier, yet still enough
of obloquy attached to him to infer very serious consequences, as the
reader will learn at a future period of our history.

CHAPTER IX

_Bessus_.--'Tis a challenge, sir, is it not?
_Gentleman_.--'Tis an inviting to the field.
--King and No King.

For a day or two after this forcible expulsion from the vicarage, Mr.
Solsgrace continued his residence at Moultrassie Hall, where the natural
melancholy attendant on his situation added to the gloom of the owner
of the mansion. In the morning, the ejected divine made excursions to
different families in the neighbourhood, to whom his ministry had
been acceptable in the days of his prosperity, and from whose grateful
recollections of that period he now found sympathy and consolation. He
did not require to be condoled with, because he was deprived of an easy
and competent maintenance, and thrust out upon the common of life, after
he had reason to suppose he would be no longer liable to such mutations
of fortune. The piety of Mr. Solsgrace was sincere; and if he had many
of the uncharitable prejudices against other sects, which polemical
controversy had generated, and the Civil War brought to a head, he had
also that deep sense of duty, by which enthusiasm is so often dignified,
and held his very life little, if called upon to lay it down in
attestation of the doctrines in which he believed. But he was soon
to prepare for leaving the district which Heaven, he conceived, had
assigned to him as his corner of the vineyard; he was to a