to the threadbare niggard. Ay, ay; full brains, empty pockets, and cold hearts, quotha!' she substituted, bitterly.

The student's room was a comfortless and bare spectacle of absolute necessaries, veiled by a litter of books and papers; the deal table and chairs, the uncushioned stone-seat in the window, the uncurtained bed in the corner opposite the chest with his suits of clothes: his meal was frugal as a hermit's pulse and water; the broiled cabbage and mash of beans, flanked by nothing more substantial than a hunch of bread and slice of cheese, and a bicker of the sour ale, of which Erasmus complained, and into which he poured his modicum of wine for his injured stomach's sake (yet at an ordinary season of the year victuals were not above the rate of sixpence for a lamb, and three-halfpence for a fat cock), and the service was rendered by a purblind, stonedeaf hostess of a beadle's widow.

As Master Lee ate, he meditated on his wonted themes; ere he slept, indeed, in place of a penitential psalm or an Ave Maria, he read in Tyndale's Bible, and prayed to the Father Almighty and the Saviour of the world; but his cry was for health and strength and indefatigable ardour, rather than for remission of sins and a holy comforter. If an angel had descended from heaven to stand by him that night, it is possible that he would have breathlessly questioned the messenger, as the unfallen Adam addressed Raphael in Milton's 'Paradise,' on the

D

economy of heaven and the rebellion and defeat of the rebel angels, in place of protesting his weakness with Moses and Isaiah, or crying out that he would die with Manoah, or confessing that his family was poor in Manasseh and he the least in his father's house with Gideon, or falling at his feet as dead with the beloved disciple.

As Lee lay on his bed, and turned uneasily in his slumbers for his stout body was unnerved, and his brain was hot there did come before him the miserable figure of the widow woman begging aid for her man-grown son, and his heart smote him with a dull reproach, and his mind busied itself with a vain curiosity-Was the youth come to such estate as he had attained? what had been his hopes and views, and were they utterly dashed by a moment's calamity? Was he his mother's only child, and had she travailed in spirit and laboured in body to bring him to this failure? His own poor, tenderly-bred mother had worn herself to the grave by such unsuitable struggles, long ere he knew them and could requite them, or even comprehend from whose life-blood came the pittance hoarded to carry the boy to the gentle training of his Alma Mater.

He might have spared this woman's son a more liberal gift. Tush! it would not matter when he wore the laurel crown, and enlightened the nations in his turn, whether he had tarried to relieve this wretched human want, and stinted himself to bestow

its temporary solace. He should confer on his kin greater benefits than this.

Says caustic Dekker, in enumerating the inhabitants of the Elysian fields-Some schollers are admitted into this societie, but the number of them is not halfe so many as are in one of the colledges of an universitie; and the reason is, they eyther kindle firebrands (in sanctified places) by their contentions, or kill the hearts of others by their coldnes.'

Oh! man, man, man, wilt never perform what thy hand findeth to do? Will thy very duties and fruits of grace be in the future, thy peace of mind as well as thy high hopes, all depending on the turning of a straw in the mysteries of Providence?

The broad, open face of the morning sun at last awoke Master Lee from his late and heavy sleep to start drowsily from his pillow, to feel straitened by the dim consciousness of a great undertaking, and the next moment to brace himself eagerly with a still white heat of intentness for the day's acquirements and its burden of knowledge to be added to the load already borne by the groaning capacity.

Hollow chest and heavy forehead,

Master Lee was fighting for that event, hurrying to rob himself of one-half of his birthright, murdering with all his might what men would have then styled a comely and serviceable carcass—and none to interfere, for, to be sure, he but did what he would with his own.

CHAPTER III.

CICELY AND NAN.

OME miles from Cambridge, still on the Grant or Cam, but where it was comparatively a rustic and wilding river, close to the fens already partly

drained by the Dutchmen's assistance, but sorely plagued by the Bailiff of Bedford,' as country folks termed the river Ouse, lay Barneelms, once a manor of fair extent though in a poor country, and containing an ancient dwelling-house sheltered by ancient wood from the cold blast off the marshes and the water. But the times which were so fine for the many, had not amended the condition of Barne-elms; the manor was curtailed to a few acres; the old house, already only fit for a reeve or yeoman, though still tenanted by the original family, was fast falling to decaybecoming a harbour for the mole and the bat; and the wood had been cut down to supply necessary wants, leaving the low weather-beaten house itself mostly built of timber, exposed to the winds-and with so few retainers to supply the requisite labour,

that the land, stripped of the covering which had brought it the ambitious name of the Chase, when the wood had encroached on the fens and not the fens on the wood, had not been used for any other crop, but stretched out in long tedded grass with mossy tree-roots and pollards protruding here and there a very desolation.

Within a small paddock surrounding the house, a mare of some claims to breeding and bearing, a rough little country pony, a few sedate cows and their calves, fed; while a not very large company of sheep with their faithful attendant colley, roamed the wild chase. A huge, gaunt mastiff sat resignedly on its chain, and submitted with dignity to the forward, silly advance of a flock of hens and chickens, young partridges, domesticated and erratic ducks constantly levanting to the tempting pools of the fens.

The mansion, a hunting-seat in the reign of one of the Edwards, was now little better than a grange; it was long and low, built in the quadrangular form so general-but in place of the central clock-tower was an old heavy stone porch, seated round for the convenience of the pilgrim or pensioner who waited for a dole, or the almoner who dispensed the broken meat, once carried daily in a basket from the groaning hall table; and the flanking angles of the building constructed carefully with loopholes and embrasures for defence, were quite ruinous and overgrown with tree ivy, while the moat was a stone-dry channel, except on one side where it would have