'Look you, Master Chiffinch,' said Peveril, 'this is no time for dallying. I am no highwayman, but a man of honour. Give me back that packet which you stole from me the other night; or, by all that is good, I will send a brace of balls through you, and search for it at leisure.'

'What night? What packet?' answered Chiffinch, confused; yet willing to protract the time for the chance of assistance, or to put Peveril off his guard. 'I know nothing of what you mean. If you are a man of honour, let me draw my sword, and I will do you right, as a gentleman should do to another.'

'Dishonourable rascal!' said Peveril, 'you escape not in this manner. You plundered me when you had me at odds; and I am not the fool to let my advantage escape, now that my turn is come. Yield up the packet; and then, if you will, I will fight you on equal terms. But first,' he reiterated, 'yield up the packet, or I will instantly send you where the tenor of your life will be hard to answer for.'

The tone of Peveril's voice, the fierceness of his eye, and the manner in which he held the loaded weapon, within a hand's-breadth of Chiffinch's head, convinced the last there was neither room for compromise, nor time for trifling. He thrust his hand into a side-pocket of his cloak, and with visible reluctance, produced those papers and dispatches with which Julian had been intrusted by the Countess of Derby.

'They are five in number,' said Julian; and

you have given me only four. Your life depends on full restitution.'

'It escaped from my hand,' said Chiffinch, producing the missing document-There it is. Now, sir, your pleasure is fulfilled, unless,' he added, sulkily, 'you design either murder or farther robbery.'

'Base wretch!' said Peveril, withdrawing his pistol, yet keeping a watchful eye on Chiffinch's motions, thou art unworthy any honest man's sword; and yet, if you dare draw your own, as you proposed but now, I am willing to give you a chance upon fair equality of terms.'

'Equality!' said Chiffinch, sneeringly; 'yes, a proper equality-sword and pistol against single rapier, and two men upon one, for Chaubert is no fighter. No, sir; I shall seek amends upon some more fitting occasion, and with more equal weapons.'

'By backbiting, or by poison, base pander!' said Julian; these are thy means of vengeance. But mark me—I know your vile purpose respecting a lady who is too worthy that her name should be uttered in such a worthless ear. Thou hast done me one injury, and thou see'st I have repaid it. But prosecute this farther villainy, and be assured I will put thee to death like a foul reptile, whose very slaver is fatal to humanity. Rely upon this, as if Machiavel had sworn it; for so surely as you keep your purpose, so surely will I prosecute my revenge.-Follow me, Lance, and leave him to think on what I have told him.'

Lance had, after the first shock, sustained a very

easy part in this rencontre; for all he had to do, was to point the butt of his whip, in the manner of a gun, at the intimidated Frenchman, who, lying on his back, and gazing at random on the skies, had as little the power or purpose of resistance, as any pig which had ever come under his own slaughterknife.

Summoned by his master from the easy duty of guarding such an unresisting prisoner, Lance remounted his horse, and they both rode off, leaving their discomfited antagonists to console themselves for their misadventure as they best could. But consolation was hard to come by in the circumstances. The French artist had to lament the dispersion of his spices, and the destruction of his magazine of sauces-an enchanter despoiled of his magic wand and talisman, could scarce have been in more desperate extremity. Chiffinch had to mourn the downfall of his intrigue, and its premature discovery. To this fellow, at least,' he thought, 'I can have bragged none-here my evil genius alone has betrayed me. With this infernal discovery, which may cost me so dear on all hands, champagne had nought to do. If there be a flask left unbroken, I will drink it after dinner, and try if it may not even yet suggest some scheme of redemption and of revenge.'

With this manly resolution, he prosecuted his journey to London.

CHAPTER XXVIII

A man so various, that he seem'd to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions-always in the wrong—
Was every thing by starts, but nothing long;
Who, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then, all for women, painting, fiddling, drinking;
Besides a thousand freaks that died in thinking.

DRYDEN.

WE must now transport the reader to the magnificent hotel in Street, inhabited at this time by the celebrated George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, whom Dryden has doomed to a painful immortality by the few lines which we have prefixed to this chapter. Amid the gay and the licentious of the laughing Court of Charles, the Duke was the most licentious and most gay; yet, while expending a princely fortune, a strong constitution, and excellent talents, in pursuit of frivolous pleasures, he nevertheless nourished deeper and more extensive designs; in which he only failed from want of that fixed purpose and regulated perseverance essential to all important enterprises, but particularly in politics.

It was long past noon; and the usual hour of the Duke's levee-if any thing could be termed usual where all was irregular-had been long past.

His hall was filled with lackeys and footmen, in the most splendid liveries; the interior apartments, with the gentlemen and pages of his household, arrayed as persons of the first quality, and, in that respect, rather exceeding than falling short of the Duke in personal splendour. But his antechamber, in particular, might be compared to a gathering of eagles to the slaughter, were not the simile too dignified to express that vile race, who, by a hundred devices all tending to one common end, live upon the wants of needy greatness, or administer to the pleasures of summer-teeming luxury, or stimulate the wild wishes of lavish and wasteful extravagance, by devising new modes and fresh motives of profusion. There stood the Projector, with his mysterious brow, promising unbounded wealth to whomsoever might choose to furnish the small preliminary sum necessary to change eggshells into the great arcanuт. There was Captain Seagull, undertaker for a foreign settlement, with the map under his arm of Indian or American kingdoms, beautiful as the primitive Eden, waiting the bold occupants, for whom a generous patron should equip two brigantines and a fly-boat. Thither came, fast and frequent, the gamesters, in their different forms and calling. This, light, young, gay in appearance, the thoughtless youth of wit and pleasure the pigeon rather than the rook-but at heart the same sly, shrewd, cold-blooded calculator, as yonder old hard-featured professor of the same science, whose eyes are grown dim with watching the dice at midnight; and whose fingers are even