whom thou wilt announce thy advancement?"

"Ah, lady! Heaven forgive me, I have a daughter,--an only child,--my
Sibyll; I cannot leave her alone, and--"

"Well, nothing should distract thy cares from thine art,--she shall be
sent for. I will rank her amongst my maidens. Fare-thee-well, Master
Warner! At night I will send for thee, and appoint the tasks I would
have thee accomplish."

So saying, the duchess quitted the room, and left Adam alone, bending
over his model in deep revery.

From this absorption it was the poor man's fate to be again aroused.

The peculiar character of the boy-prince of Gloucester was that of one
who, having once seized upon an object, never willingly relinquished it.
First, he crept and slid and coiled round it as the snake. But if craft
failed, his passion, roused by resistance, sprang at his prey with
a lion's leap: and whoever examines the career of this extraordinary
personage, will perceive, that whatever might be his habitual hypocrisy,
he seemed to lose sight of it wholly when once resolved upon force. Then
the naked ferocity with which the destructive propensity swept away
the objects in his path becomes fearfully and startlingly apparent, and
offers a strange contrast to the wily duplicity with which, in calmer
moments, he seems to have sought to coax the victim into his folds.
Firmly convinced that Adam's engine had been made the medium of
dangerous and treasonable correspondence with the royal prisoner, and of
that suspicious, restless, feverish temperament which never slept when
a fear was wakened, a doubt conceived, he had broke from his brother,
whose more open valour and less unquiet intellect were ever willing to
leave the crown defended but by the gibbet for the detected traitor,
the sword for the declared foe; and obtaining Edward's permission "to
inquire further into these strange matters," he sent at once for the
porter who had conveyed the model to the Tower; but that suspicious
accomplice was gone. The sound of the explosion of the engine had no
less startled the guard below than the spectators above. Releasing
their hold of their prisoner, they had some taken fairly to their heels,
others rushed into the palace to learn what mischief had ensued; and
Hugh, with the quick discretion of his north country, had not lost so
favourable an opportunity for escape. There stood the dozing mule at the
door below, but the guide was vanished. More confirmed in his suspicions
by