While this examination was going on, Mr. Short had busied himself about the room, and had loudly repeated an order he pretended Mr. Scruton had given him "Another bottle, and one for His Majesty's officer? Yes, your honour," which had taken him out of the room, not to the cellar. Had he been watched, he would have been seen creeping like a shadow to Jacob's room, and then as nimbly dropping over an open balcony by the kitchen, and getting into the cellar that way. He returned just as the officer, still angrier at Jacob's answer, was ordering his man to light a lantern and conduct him to the young man's bed-room.

"Better all come along; there can't be too many witnesses in a case of this sort," said the officer, and they all tramped up the stairs into the attic where Jacob, in his innocence, had been dreaming of a

happy time in which village bells were ringing, and he was the bridegroom before the village altar, and Mary Kirk the bride.

"Excuse me, gentlemen, I will stay here. I would give up my father if he transgressed the law, but I don't think justice would require that I should see him hanged."

Jacob looked on as one still in a dream while they rummaged his room. Presently, holding up a coat which had lain across a chair, the officer asked

"Is this yours ?"

"Yes," answered Jacob.

"Did you wear it last night ?" "Yes."

"And is this yours?" asked the officer, taking a purse from one of the pockets. "No."

"Is it yours?" asked the officer, holding up the lantern so that the light fell upon it.

VOL. I.

G

"By St. Paul, it is!" said Mr. Scruton, "and I'll thank you to deliver it up, for I haven't a guinea to pay my score."

"That may not be at present," said the officer; "we hold it for evidence, and we bind you over to appear in court, identifying it in due course. Young man, what is your name?"

"Jacob Marks."

"Jacob Marks, I arrest you in the King's name, for robbery on the King's highway." แ I am innocent," said Jacob.

"Very likely," said the officer; "but they'll hang you all the same unless you make your innocence plainer to the judges

than you have done to me."

83

CHAPTER IV.

A MATRIMONIAL CONSPIRACY AND A LEGEND.

Sing, muses nine,

The joys of wine,

When George the Third was King.

Three bottle men

Were common then

As green leaves in the spring.

RACKENBURY TOWERS is an old

BRAC

mansion which, under another name,

still attracts the attention of the curious, and is not unknown to the antiquarian societies of England.

It is half hidden among oaks and elms and chestnut-trees in the valley below the

little village of Grassmoor. In winter-time you can see the grey stone walls and gables, the old watch-tower, and the lake; in spring you only get flashes of the water through the green branches of the woods; and in summer the mere slumbers there, fringed with bulrushes, and shut out from view until you come suddenly upon it.

At all times you might, until a few years ago, hear the roar of the wild animals which the Ellerbie family kept in a sort of circus near the stables; and at strange hours you may still hear the chiming of bells in the restored family chapel that joins the west wing of the house. The Ellerbies had been Roman Catholics for many generations. They had suffered for the Church, and the red history of the family had no doubt done much to earn for Brackenbury Towers the reputation of being haunted.

Lord Ellerbie, though he still maintain