g, a great many stuck in the walls
like plums in a Christmas pudding, the doors were blown in with petards,
and the principal defenders, with a few wounded Roundheads, were carried
off to Cromwell himself; whilst the house itself was fired, and blazed
away merrily.

Cromwell threatened the royalist gentleman with death for defending an
untenable place.

"I didn't know it was untenable," said the gentleman. "How could I till
I had tried?"

"You had the fate of fortified places to instruct you," said Cromwell,
and he promised faithfully to hang him on his own ruins.

The gentleman turned pale and his lips quivered, but he said, "Well, Mr.
Cromwell, I've fought for my royal master according to my lights, and I
can die for him."

"You shall, sir," said Mr. Cromwell.

About next morning Mr. Cromwell, who had often a cool fit after a hot
one, and was a very big man, take him altogether, gave a different order.
"The fool thought he was doing his duty; turn him loose."

The fool in question was so proud of his battered house that he left it
standing there, bullets and all, and built him a house elsewhere.

King Charles the Second had not landed a month before he made him a
baronet, and one tenant after another occupied a portion of the old
mansion. Two state-rooms were roofed and furnished with the relics of the
entire mansion, and these two rooms the present baronet's surveyor
occupied at rare intervals when he was inspecting the large properties
connected with the baronet's estate.

Mary Bartley now occupied these two rooms, connected by folding-doors,
and she sat pensive in the oriel-window of her bedroom. Young ladies
cling to their bedrooms, especially when they are pretty and airy.
Suddenly she heard a scurry and patter of a horse's hoof, reined up at
the side of the house. She darted from the window and stood panting in
the middle of the room. The next minute Mrs. Easton entered the
sitting-room all in a flutter, and beckoned her. Mary flew to her.

"He is here."

"I thought he would be."

"Will you meet him down-stairs?"

"No, here."

Mrs. Easton acquiesced, rapidly closed the folding-doors, and went out,
saying, "Try and calm yourself, Miss Mary."

Miss Mary tried to obey her, but Walter rushed in impetuously, pale,
worn, agitated, yet enraptured at the first sight of her, and Mary threw
herself round his neck in a moment, and he clasped her fluttering bosom
to his beating heart, and this was the na