ts; _inter alia_, a
sword and a saddle,--not, you will understand, for my own use.

"Things are going on very well, but are very, even frightfully near;
only be quiet! Pray would you, in case of necessity, take a free passage
to Holland, next week or the week after; stay two or three days, and
come back, all expenses paid? If you write to B---- at Cambridge, tell
him above all things to hold his tongue. If you are near Palace Yard
to-morrow before two, pray come to see me. Do not come on purpose;
especially as I may perhaps be away, and at all events shall not be
there until eleven, nor perhaps till rather later.

"I fear I shall have alarmed your Mother by my irruption. Forgive me
for that and all my exactions from you. If the next month were over, I
should not have to trouble any one.

"Yours affectionately,
"J. STERLING."

Busy weeks indeed; and a glowing smithy-light coming through the
chinks!--The romance of _Arthur Coningsby_ lay written, or half-written,
in his desk; and here, in his heart and among his hands, was an acted
romance and unknown catastrophes keeping pace with that.

Doubts from the doctors, for his health was getting ominous, threw some
shade over the adventure. Reproachful reminiscences of Coleridge and
Theosophy were natural too; then fond regrets for Literature and its
glories: if you act your romance, how can you also write it? Regrets,
and reproachful reminiscences, from Art and Theosophy; perhaps some
tenderer regrets withal. A crisis in life had come; when, of innumerable
possibilities one possibility was to be elected king, and to swallow all
the rest, the rest of course made noise enough, and swelled themselves
to their biggest.

Meanwhile the ship was fast getting ready: on a certain day, it was
to drop quietly down the Thames; then touch at Deal, and take on board
Torrijos and his adventurers, who were to be in waiting and on the
outlook for them there. Let every man lay in his accoutrements, then;
let every man make his packages, his arrangements and farewells.
Sterling went to take leave of Miss Barton. "You are going, then; to
Spain? To rough it amid the storms of war and perilous insurrection; and
with that weak health of yours; and--we shall never see you more, then!"
Miss Barton, all her gayety gone, the dimpling softness become liquid
sorrow, and the musical ringing voice one wail of woe, "burst