tulation, jumped from the bank, vaulted lightly over the intervening shrubs, and leaping back into his proper cage, the door of which had been invitingly left open for his reception, was secured without the smallest injury to any one.

It were needless to describe Henry's feelings at his sudden and safe extrication from a jeopardy so fearful. He himself neither stayed to analyze them, nor to thank Hodge for his bold and timely assistance, but rushed back to the spot where he had seen Emily sink fainting upon the turf. She was no longer visible. He ran to the Poacher's Lawn, where the dinnertable, with the fragments of the collation, remained in statu quo, but neither guests nor attendants were to be seen. As the light cart had also disappeared, he concluded that it had been used to convey the fugitives to the Fighting Cocks, as the nearest place of safety. Thither he accordingly proceeded, when he learnt from Tony that Squire Ringwood, having run back and thrown Miss Welbeck over his shoulder, a job which belonged by rights to Captain Frampton, who had charge of her, but which he had thought proper to decline, the

ladies had been huddled into the cart, and the whole party had quickly found their way to the inn. He added, that they were then up-stairs, endeavouring to recover from their alarm, though some of the females, especially Miss Welbeck, still remained exceedingly ill from the effects of terror.

Much as he wished to relieve the apprehension of the latter, Henry's pride would not allow him to obtrude himself upon the others, and he therefore sent a polite message by Tony, informing the company that he himself was safe and uninjured, that the lion had been secured in its caravan, that they might therefore return home, whenever it suited them, in perfect security, and that he trusted the ladies would dismiss every feeling of alarm, and experience no farther ill-effects from the agitation they had undergone. At the instance of Tony, he took some refreshment, of which after all his exertions he stood in no small need, and then striking across the country, made his way back to the George at Thaxted.

His disordered and heated appearance, for his bodily exertions and perturbation of mind

had thrown him into a profuse perspiration, together with the defiled state of his clothes, on which the lion had left the marks of his muddy paws, soon revealed to Mrs. Tenby that something extraordinary had happened, and she had no sooner learnt the particulars of Henry's escape, than lifting up her hands and eyes with an amazement that even predominated over her anger, she exclaimed, "The old one! Surely, surely you must be poking fun at me! What! you don't mean to say that you dropped from the tree on purpose, and gave yourself up to a great, savage, teejus crittur, that could have scalped you, and turned you inside out in half a minute! Well, that beats all natur! what for? Why, for your worst enemies, every one of whom has been vilifying and telling lies of you, and running you down, as if you were a Mohawk or a Nigger. Did you ever think of that ?"

And

"I thought of nothing: I acted upon the impulse of the moment; but if I had had time to reflect, it would not have made the smallest. difference in my conduct, for I know not a pleasanter way of destroying my enemies than by

turning them into friends. Besides, Ringwood and Emily Welbeck were of the party."

"And what are they? what can they ever be to you? Guess your own skin is nearer to you than another man's jacket. You're talking 'tarnal nonsense, Henry, 'twouldn't be you if 'tw'ant, and you act for all the world just like an addle-headed gump. My poor, dear, brave boy!" continued Mrs. Tenby, laying her hand upon his shoulder, as her wrath gave way to a feeling of compassionate contempt, "You're not fit to go alone; you ain't, indeed for as if 'twere not enough to let others bamboozle you, you make a cat's-paw of your own self. Come, boy, change your coat, and let's get a snack o' dinner, for you must be pretty considerably famished, I reckon."

CHAPTER VI.

It was the observation of a great philosopher, that the moment the world should see a perfect police, the moment there should be no contraband trade, that moment it would become quite impossible to write a good romance, for that then nothing would occur in real life which might, with any moderate degree of ornament, be formed into the ground-work of a fiction.

SCHLEGEL'S LECTURES.

HENRY'S intrepid conduct in this affair, which was largely bruited abroad by Hodge Nettletop, not without several marvellous additament, and widely circulated by Ringwood and Fanny Frampton, with a stricter attention to veracity, though with a not less ardent admiration, occasioned a considerable change of public opinion in the vicinity of Thaxted, especially when contrasted with Captain