Chapter 12

Beggar?--the only freeman of your commonwealth;
Free above Scot-free, that observe no laws,
Obey no governor, use no religion
But what they draw from their own ancient custom,
Or constitute themselves, yet they are no rebels.
Brome.


With our reader's permission, we will outstep the slow, though sturdy
pace of the Antiquary, whose halts, as he, turned round to his companion
at every moment to point out something remarkable in the landscape, or to
enforce some favourite topic more emphatically than the exercise of
walking permitted, delayed their progress considerably.

Notwithstanding the fatigues and dangers of the preceding evening, Miss
Wardour was able to rise at her usual hour, and to apply herself to her
usual occupations, after she had first satisfied her anxiety concerning
her father's state of health. Sir Arthur was no farther indisposed than
by the effects of great agitation and unusual fatigue, but these were
sufficient to induce him to keep his bedchamber.

To look back on the events of the preceding day, was, to Isabella, a very
unpleasing retrospect. She owed her life, and that of her father, to the
very person by whom, of all others, she wished least to be obliged,
because she could hardly even express common gratitude towards him
without encouraging hopes which might be injurious to them both. "Why
should it be my fate to receive such benefits, and conferred at so much
personal risk, from one whose romantic passion I have so unceasingly
laboured to discourage? Why should chance have given him this advantage
over me? and why, oh why, should a half-subdued feeling in my own bosom,
in spite of my sober reason, almost rejoice that he has attained it?"

While Miss Wardour thus taxed herself with wayward caprice, she, beheld
advancing down the avenue, not her younger and more dreaded preserver,
but the old beggar who had made such a capital figure in the melodrama of
the preceding evening.

She rang the bell for her maid-servant. "Bring the old man up stairs."

The servant returned in a minute or two--"He will come up at no rate,
madam;--he says his clouted shoes never were on a carpet in his life, and
that, please God, they never shall.--Must I take him into the servants'
hall?"

"No; stay, I want to speak with him--Where is he?" for she had lost sight
of him as he approached the house.

"Sitting in the sun on the stone-bench in the court, beside the window of
the flagged parlour."

"Bid him stay there--I'll come down to the parlour, and speak with him at
the window."

She came down accordingly, and found the mendicant half-seated,
half-reclining, upon the bench