GOSBERTON CHURCH, LINCOLNSHIRE. GOSBERTON church consists of a nave with aisles, transepts, a choir, a chapel of the blessed sacrament at the end of the south aisle, together with a south porch, and a spire steeple rising at the intersection of the nave and transepts. The western front of the nave has a small entrance, of which the lower part is bricked up, and the remainder filled with glass. Above is a window of five lights, with cinquefoiled perpendicular tracery trefoiled. The parapet is embattled, having the lower part ornamented with continued diagonal squares, and crosses carved on the battlements. There are small square pinnacles at the angles, and a figure of St. Paul preaching at the apex. The north and south walls are pierced each by eight windows. of two lights, having Tudor arches with cinquefoiled tracery enclosing quatrefoils, and have parapets similar to that at the west end. The south aisle has at the west end a window of three lights, with ogee arches cinquefoiled, and perpendicular tracery trefoiled, having quatrefoiled recesses. The south wall has a window of three lights, with pointed arches cinquefoiled, with perpendicular tracery trefoiled, the tracery of the centre light being divided by an embat tled transom. There are also two other windows similar to that at the west end. There is a door with niches on each side, and a porch, which has been much mutilated, having niches on each side of the entrance, once occupied by statues of St. Peter and St. Paul. The north aisle has a western window of three lights, with perpendicular tracery, cinquefoiled. In the north wall is a window of three lights, cinquefoiled; above the entrance door also three other windows, with trefoiled decorated tracery. Between the windows of both aisles there are buttresses in two divisions; the parapets are plain, with moulded cornices and copings. The south wall of the south transept has a window of five lights, divided into two stages by a transom. The first stage has pointed arches cinquefoiled with the transom, ornamented with Tudor flowers, inclosing blank shields. The second stage has ogee arches, also cinquefoiled; above which is perpendicular tracery trefoiled. In the east wall is a window of three lights, trefoiled, with perpendicular tracery. A cross crowns apex of the gables. The north transept is similar to the south, but has two windows in the east wall, of the same design as the windows of the south aisle. the The choir and chapel have been much mutilated, the latter having been used for a school-room. The east window of the choir is without mullions or tracery; and the chapel has a plain, square-headed window of four lights. The tower has on each front a louvre-boarded belfry window of two lights, each with trefoiled tracery and embattled cills. It is crowned by an embattled parapet, having a cornice ornamented with gurgoyles and bosses. There are square pinnacles at the angles, also embattled, with crocketed and finialed cones. The lofty spire is octagonal. Each of the fronts, corresponding with those of the tower, is pierced by two windows, the lower one of two lights, with an embattled transom, and trefoiled perpendicular tracery, under a crocketed and finialed pediment springing from sculptured corbel heads: the top window has one light, trefoiled with a similar pediment. The other fronts have each a window of two lights with trefoiled tracery, having a quatrefoiled recess, and similar pediment to that just described. The angles of the spire are crocketed, and the whole terminates in a finial. An octagonal font stands at the west end of the nave in the interior. The nave and north aisle retain the ancient oak roof; while under the tower is a beautiful groined roof, with the intersections ornamented with bosses. CHAP. XIV. -- BOOK THE SECOND. without concealment and without a blush. Here and there the gutter was filled by some herculean frame fallen prostrate in the imbecility of “Marry, this is miching mallecho, it means mis- drunkenness; and the waters of the kennel, rife chief."-Hamlet. Along one of those corrupt streets, now happily extinct, where crime was once fostered in its growth, and sheltered from the vigilance of the law, the tall figure of a woman might have been seen moving with that firm measured tread which denotes a relentless purpose. Her mean attire accorded with the character of the neighbourhood she traversed, but not so her air or gait. There was something at variance between them, that gave her decayed habiliments rather the appearance of disguise. Though her manner, too, was devoid of hesitation, she did not pursue her path with the decision of one accustomed to its windings, but paused occasionally to consult a paper, and then wound on again, guided by the dim lamplight. Yet there were scenes that might have made a bold heart shudder-evidences of guilt before which even a man, and a brave one, might have shrunk appalled. Some of the houses were closed from attic to cellar, and a faint glimmering through the shutter told that expectant watchers were within, waiting perhaps to hear the result of a burglary, or the success of some planned exploit upon the highway. Other of those looming tenements poured light from every casement; and there vice, stripped of all the meretricious halo with which more refined debauchery loves to veil its passions, rioted with ordure and floating offal, washed over him in their passage to the sewers. Young children, squalid with want, dwarfed with gin, hideous with the ugliness of perverted intellect, were wandering about, though it was past midnight; their converse, strewn with oaths, already betraying the pride of sin, which had been implanted by parental iniquity. Nor was woman wanting in the light of beauty and on the crutch of age she was there, bad as her male companions; so true is it that woman is ever what man chooses to make her. The very air had something sympathetic in its fetid stealthy stillness, that rendered it a fitting atmosphere for such unhallowed dwellers; it seemed dank as a grave with rottenness, heavy as a charnel breath with undisturbed corruption. Closely veiled, but with resolute tread, that tall female figure strode along, insensible, or ap. parently so, to all that passed around. The end of the street she had entered was a dead wall. She consulted her paper again, and turned off down a narrow court, where the doors and windows teemed with suspicious pocket-handkerchiefs, and innumerable articles of wearing apparel. She stopped before one of these doors, and knocked three times, leaving a distinct and measured pause between each stroke. For some time there was a dead silence; voices that had been talking loudly within grew suddenly still, and then a window opened, and a ragged female head protruded itself, covered F with loose dishevelled hair, as if the owner had risen from slumber. Only one word was interchanged, but it was sufficient, for in a few moments the door opened, and the new arrival stole in noiselessly. By the glimmer of a greasy rushlight, which her conductor carried in a cleft stick, they ascended a devious broken staircase. It was so constructed that one person filled the narrow passage, and there were slides in the wall intended to form barricades in connection with the banister. On each landing the deal wainscot showed false panels, to facilitate escape from the police, and also smaller traps, through which stolen goods might be conveyed away to the adjoining house. The new comer, however, passed these grim appendages without remark, or noted them with an untroubled eye. Silently as before, she entered a room pointed out by the coarse hand of the other female, and, motioning her companion away, locked herself in the strange chamber. It was a low-roofed apartment, replete with filth and misery, possessing no other furniture than a chair of splintered cane, and a low straw pallet, on which reclined the fevered frame of a sick man. Erect and with an exulting smile the woman perused the features of the sufferer. A low laugh escaped her, a self-hugging expression of contentment, while she gazed upon the tablet of a countenance, whose only inscription was unexpiated guilt. "It is he!" she muttered at last, still gazing, but with folded arms and musing eye, upon his face. Still the woman gazed without a whisper of reply, while the patient writhed upon his couch more uneasily than before. Drawing himself painfully round to the side on which she stood, he bent his eyes upon her in turn; but the feeble rushlight glimmered behind, throwing her form and face into shadow. "It ain't Meg!" he said, and strange apprehensions were rapidly pictured upon his cowering face; "what are ye staring at- is it-noyou can't be anything un'arthly: my time ain't come yet-why don't yer speak!" "Will you answer me if I do speak?" said the woman sternly. At the first sound of her voice his brow grew troubled, as if he were vainly striving to recall a memory from the confused images of the past. "Will you tell me all ?" continued the woman, in her cold, cruel voice. "I ain't got nothin' to tell," he cried, falteringly; "who says I have?" Then why are you here--why are you hidden-why are you dying stifled in a den like this, if not to escape the prison and the Tyburn Tree?" "I'm not dying!" exclaimed the quivering wretch; "look here," and he lifted his bare arm from the straw; "there's strength left yet." "To murder another victim ?" 66 "Who are you?" shrieked the man, glaring at her with bloodshot eyes, and a forehead dripping with cold sweat. "You lie !" he cried again, I did not murder him; it was a mistake. Leave me; I am not dying; I will fight you to the last, fiend that you are! if I must go to -, you shall drag me there." He rose up in bed, with his fists clenched in delirium, and the foam oozing through his parted lips. "You refuse to tell the tale?" she said, leaving his menaces unheeded; "then the task shall be mine." He sank back exhausted upon his mattress. She proceeded: 66 'Eighteen years since, in the forest of Jerningham, many a mile from hence, lived a gipsy crew; and their queen was among the band. 0! they were a merry set! The rivers yielded them fish, the covers gave them game; they had the freedom and the traditions of their race, and they were happy." The sufferer lay silent as the grave, harrowed less by the words, though they were sufficient to strike him dumb, than by the half-remembered voice in which they were uttered. "The queen was called fair; not a man of the band but loved her, yet she loved none. At length one of the crew discovered that her heart wandered from her own race, and that her love was given to a man of English blood-a noble and he vowed revenge! Do you reinember that night when the heath blazed, and the forest sighed, and the sky was as crimson as the blood that was spilt? Do you remember the crack of that pistol which was meant for Lord Haverdale, but which killed the lord of the manor by a fatal error?" "There's only one person on 'arth as could know that," exclaimed the invalid; “you are the devil, or-" 66 Ayesha the queen speaking to Shingle the gipsy!" added the woman. She bent over him, and looked into his eyes; and through the lines of sorrow and age and deadly passions he read the likeness that confirmed her words. 66 I know'd we had met before," said Shingle, after a lengthened pause, during which he communed with himself; "and now, as you have told me all, suppose I was to keep you here, and get you laid by the heels, or even scragged right out, what's to stop it-I was in your power, but now you are in mine." "Fool! you dare not; if by a certain hour I am not safe and sound in a distant quarter, the police will find a packet that condemns you to the gallows, and works out my revenge. But no! no! we are necessary to each otherlisten!" In the clear low tones of a deadly hatred she then recounted briefly the circumstances that |