ter was settled, and we both
satisfied.

* * * * *

So, once more, the time began to pass very agreeably for me. Here was I,
safe from all the embroilments of town, in the same house with my Cousin
Dorothy, and with plenty of leisure for my languages again. Yet my
satisfaction was greatly broken up when I heard, on the last day of
January that all that I had feared was come about, and that of the three
men whom I had seen condemned at the Old Bailey, two--Mr. Ireland and
Mr. Grove--had been executed seven days before: (Mr. Pickering was kept
back on some excuse, and not put to death until May). The way I heard of
it was in this manner.

I was in Puckeridge one day, on a matter which I do not now remember,
and was going to the stable of the _White Hart_ inn to get my horse to
ride back again, when I ran into Mr. Rumbald who was there on the same
errand. I was in my country suit, and very much splashed; and it was
going on for evening, so he noticed nothing of me but my face.

"Why, Mallock," he cried--"It is Mr. Mallock, is it not?"

I told him yes.

He exchanged a few words with me, for he was one of those fellows who
when they have once made up their minds to a thing, do not easily change
it, and he was persuaded that I was of his kind and something of a
daredevil too, which was what he liked. Then at the end he said
something which made me question him as to what he meant.

"Have you not heard?" he cried. "Why the Popish dogs were hanged a week
ago--Ireland and Grove, I mean. And there be three or four more
men--accused by Bedloe of Godfrey's murder, and will be tried
presently."

I need not say what a horror it was to me to hear that; for I had had
more hope in my heart than I had thought. But I was collected enough to
say something that satisfied him; and, as again he had been drinking, he
was not very quick.

"And those three or four?" I asked. "Are they Jesuits too?"

"No," said Rumbald, "but there will be another batch presently, I make
no doubt."

I got rid of him at last; and rode homewards; but it was with a very
heavy heart. Not once yet had the King exercised his prerogative of
mercy; and if he yielded at the first, and that against the Jesuits whom
he had sworn to protect, was there anything in which he would resist?

My Cousin Dorothy saw in my face as I came in that something was the
matter; so I told her the truth.

"May they rest in peace," she said; and b