The night was so dark when I repaired to the casement, that I have been trying to compose a description of it for you, in the style of the best romances. But after having summoned to my mind all the black articles of value that I can recollect—ebony, sables, palls, pitch, and even coal, I find I have nothing better to say, than, simply, that it was a dark night.

Having opened the casement, I sat down at it, and repeated these lines aloud.

As soon as I had finished the sonnet, a low and tremulous voice, close to the casement, sung these words:

I sat enraptured, and heaved a sigh.

'Enchanting sigh!' cried the singer, as he sprang through the window; but it was not the voice of Stuart.

I screamed loudly.

'Hush!' cried the mysterious unknown, and advanced towards me; when, to my great relief, the door was thrown open, and the old peasant entered, with Mary behind him, holding a candle.

In the middle of the room, stood a man, clad in a black cloak, with black feathers in his hat, and a black mask on his face.

The peasant, pale as death, ran forward, knocked him to the ground, and seized a pistol and carving-knife, that were stuck in a belt about his waist.

'Unmask him!' cried I.

The peasant, kneeling on his body, tore off the mask, and I beheld—Betterton!

'Alarm the neighbours, Mary!' cried the peasant.

Mary put down the candle, and went out.

'I must appear in an unfavourable light to you, my good man,' said this terrifying character; 'but the young lady will inform you that I came hither at her own request.'

'For shame!' cried I. 'What a falsehood!'

'Falsehood!' said he. 'I have your own letter, desiring me to come.'

'The man is mad,' cried I. 'I never wrote him a letter.'

'I can produce it to your face,' said he, pulling a paper from his pocket, and to my great amazement reading these lines.

'Cherubina begs that Betterton will repair to her window, at ten o'clock to-night, disguised like an Italian assassin, with dagger, cloak, and pistol. The signal is to be his singing an air under the casement, which she will then open, and he may enter her chamber.'

'I will take the most solemn oath,' cried I, 'that I never wrote a line of it. But this unhappy wretch, who is a ruffian of the first pretensions, has a base design upon me, and has followed me from London, for the purpose of effecting it; so I suppose, he wrote the letter himself, as an excuse, in case of discovery.'

'Then he shall march to the magistrate's,' said the peasant, 'and I will indict him for house-breaking!'

A man half so frantic as Betterton I never beheld. He foamed, he grinned, he grinded the remnants of his teeth; and swore that Stuart was at the bottom of the whole plot.

By this time, Mary having returned with two men, we set forward in a body to the magistrate's, and delivered our depositions before him. I swore that I did not write the letter, and that, to the best of my belief, Betterton harboured bad designs against me.

The peasant swore that he had found the culprit, armed with a knife and pistol, in his house.

The magistrate, therefore, notwithstanding all that Betterton could say, committed him to prison without hesitation.

As they were leading him away, he cast a furious look at the magistrate, and said:

'Ay, Sir, I suppose you are one of those pensioned justices, who minister our vague and sanguinary laws, and do dark deeds for our usurping oligarchy, that has assumed a power of making our most innocent actions misdemeanours, of determining points of law without appeal, of imprisoning our persons without trial, and of breaking open our houses with the standing army. But nothing will go right till we have a reform in Parliament—neither peace nor war, commerce nor agriculture——'

'Clocks nor watches, I suppose,' said the magistrate.

'Ay, clocks nor watches,' cried Betterton, in a rage. 'For how can our mechanics make any thing good, while a packed parliament deprives them of money and a mart?'

'So then,' said the magistrate, 'if St. Dunstan's clock is out of order, 'tis owing to the want of a reform in Parliament.'

'I have not the most distant doubt of it,' cried Betterton.

''Tis fair then,' said the magistrate, 'that the reformists should take such a latitude as they do; for, probably, by their encouragement of time-pieces, they will at last discover the longitude.'

'No sneering, Sir,' cried Betterton. 'Now do your duty, as you call it, and abide the consequence.'

This gallant grey Lothario was then led off; and our party returned home.

Adieu.