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back to Durham by Ravensworth, where you were seen and recognised. You see I have a good case against you, Mr. Conyngham.'

'Yes, I admit you have a good case against me, but you have not caught me yet.'

Sir John Pleydell looked at him coldly.

'You do not even take the trouble to deny the facts I have named.'

'Why should I, when they are true?' asked Conyngham carelessly.

Sir John Pleydell leant back in his chair.

'I have classified you,' he said with a queer laugh.

'Ah!' answered Conyngham, suddenly uneasy.

'Yes—as a fool.'

He leant forward with a deprecating gesture of his thin white

hand.

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'Do not be offended,' he said, and do not reproach yourself for having given your case away. You never had a case, Mr. Conyngham. Chartists are not made of your material at all. As soon as you gave me your card in Madrid, I had a slight suspicion. I thought you were travelling under a false name. It was plain to the merest onlooker that you were not the man I sought. You are too easy-going, too much of a gentleman to be a Chartist. You are screening somebody else. You have played

the part well, and with an admirable courage and fidelity. I wish my boy Alfred had had a few such friends as you. But you are a fool, Mr. Conyngham. No man on earth is worth the sacrifice that you have made.'

Conyngham slowly stirred his coffee. He was meditating.

'You have pieced together a very pretty tale,' he said at length. 'Some new scheme to get me within the reach of the English law, no doubt.'

'It is a pretty tale-too pretty for practical life. And if you want proofs I will mention the fact that the Chartist meeting was at Chester-le-Street, not Durham; that my house stands in a hollow and not on a hill; that you could not possibly go to Durham via Ravensworth, for they lie in opposite directions. No, Mr. Conyngham, you are not the man I seek. And, strange to say, I took a liking to you when I first saw you. I am no believer in instinct, or mutual sympathy, or any such sentimental nonsense. I do not believe in much, Mr. Conyngham, and not in human

nature at all. I know too much about it for that. But there must have been something in that liking for you at first sight. I wish you no harm, Mr. Conyngham. I am like Balaam-I came to curse, and now stay to bless. Or, perhaps, I am more like Balaam's companion and adviser-I bray too much.'

He sat back again with a queer smile.

'You may go home to England to-morrow if you care to,' he added, after a pause, and if that affair is ever raked up against you I will be your counsel, if you will have me.'

'Thank you.'

'You do not want to go home to England,' suggested Sir John, whose ear was as quick as his eye.

one.'

'No, I have affairs in Spain.'
'Or perhaps a castle here.

Beware of such I once had

And the cold grey face softened for an instant. It seemed at times as if there were after all a man behind that marble casing. 'A man who can secure such a friendship as yours has proved itself to be,' said Sir John after a short silence, can scarcely be wholly bad. He may, as you say, have made a mistake. I promise nothing, but perhaps I will make no further attempts to find him.'

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Conyngham was silent. To speak would have been to admit. So far as I am concerned,' said Sir John, rising, ‘you are safe in this or any country. But I warn you-you have a dangerous enemy in Spain.'

Larralde.

I know,' answered Conyngham with a laugh, Mr. Esteban I once undertook to deliver a letter for him. It was not what he represented it to be, and after I had delivered it he began to suspect me of having read it. He is kind enough to consider me of some importance in the politics of this country owing to the information I am supposed to possess. nothing of the contents of the letter, but I want to regain it-if only for a few moments. That is the whole story, and that is how matters stand between Larralde and myself.'

(To be continued.)

I know

THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

AUGUST 1897.

THE ENGLISHMAN'S CALENDAR.

AUGUST.

1 The siege of Londonderry raised, 1689.
Priestley's discovery of oxygen, 1774.
Victory of the Nile, Lord Nelson, 1798.
2 Thomas Gainsborough, painter, d. 1788.
The East India Company abolished, 1858.
3 Grinling Gibbons, wood carver, d. 1720.
4 Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet, b. 1792.
5 The Judicature Acts passed, 1873.
6 Ben Jonson, poet and dramatist, d. 1637.
Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1861.
7 Imprisonment for debt abolished, 1869.
8 Elementary Education Act, 1870.

9 Married Women's Property Act, 1870.

10 Royal Observatory of Greenwich completed, 1675. 11 John Henry Newman, cardinal, d. 1890.

12 Diwáni conferred on the East India Company, 1765. William Blake, poet and painter, d. 1827.

13 Jeremy Taylor, divine, d. 1667.

Battle of Blenheim, Duke of Marlborough, 1704.
Cape Colony ceded to the English, 1814.

14 Tamburlaine licensed for publication, 1590.

15 Thomas de Quincey, author, b. 1785.

The new Lanark mills started by Robert Owen, 1799.

16 Natives of India admitted to office, 1832.

17 Thomas Stothard, painter, b. 1755.

18 Major Laing reached Timbuktu, 1826.

19 Edward I. crowned, 1274.

20 Paradise Lost published, 1667.

Burke and Wills, Australian explorers, 1860.

21c. The Factory Acts consolidated, 1883.

22 The Convention of Cintra, 1808.

23 Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia licensed, 1588.

24 Naval victory off the South Foreland, Hubert de Burgh, 1217.

VOL. III.--NO. 14, N.S.

7

25 Captain Cook's first voyage round the world, 1768.

26 Battle of Crecy, Edward III., 1346.

Sir Robert Walpole b. 1676.

27 The West India Docks opened, 1802.

28 Abolition of slavery throughout the British dominions, 1833.

29 John Fletcher, poet and dramatist, buried, 1625.

30

John Locke, philosopher, b. 1632.

Sir George Jessel made Master of the Rolls, 1873.

31 John Bunyan, author, d. 1688. Pilgrim's Progress published 1678. Action of the Revenge, under Sir Richard Grenvil, 1591.

(7, 8, 9) These Bills were all actually made law on the 9th of the month. The Factory Acts find an approximate date on the 21st. (10) The building was designed by Wren, and built by Charles II. out of money obtained from the sale of damaged gunpowder. John Flamsteed was the first stronomer Royal appointed. (12) By this firman of the Mogul Emperor, the East India Company found itself transformed from a trading company fighting for its trading rights in the midst of anarchy, to a Government owning twenty-five millions of subjects and an annual revenue of four crores of rupees. (14) With Tamburlaine the peculiar genius of the English drama asserted itself; it decided once for all the direction that genius was to take, and all but created the tool it was to use. It must have been written not later than 1587, and was published the same year as licensed. (18) 'Laing was the first European who had ever entered that historic city, which for four centuries had been the loadstone of kings, merchants, and savants.' (20) The date on which these two started on their memorable expedition across the Australian Continent to the Gulf of Carpentaria. (25) On this day the 'Endeavour' sailed from Plymouth on the voyage which Admiral Wharton, the latest editor of Cook's Journals, has described as 'to the English nation the most momentous voyage of discovery that has ever taken place.'

Mungo Park and the Niger. By James Thomson.

J. M. S.

147

THE BATTLE OF MINDENĮ

AUGUST 1, 1759.

AN ANNIVERSARY STUDY.

THE battle of Minden might almost be described as having been won by a blunder, and a blunder about so insignificant a thing as a mere preposition! Prince Ferdinand, who commanded the allied army, had placed the six regiments of British infantry, who formed the flower of his force, in his centre, and had given orders that they were to move forward in attack 'on sound of drum.' The British read the order, 'with sound of drum.' The seventyfive splendid squadrons of horse who formed the French centre were in their immediate front. The British saw their foes before them, line on line of tossing horse-heads and gleaming helmets, of scarlet and steel, and wind-blown crests. What other 'signal of battle' was needed? Obeying the warlike impulse in their blood, they at once moved forward 'with sound of drum'-every drummer-boy in the regiments, in fact, plying his drum-sticks with furious energy, and those waves of warlike sound stirred the dogged valour of the British to a yet fiercer daring! Prince Ferdinand never contemplated such a movement; it violated all the rules of war. What sane general would have launched 6,000 infantry in line to attack 10,000 of the finest cavalry in Europe in ranked squadrons? It is on record that the Hanoverian troops placed in support of the British regiments watched with dumb and amazed alarm the 'stupid' British moving serenely forward to a contest so lunatic. But to the confusion of all critics, and to the mingled wrath and shame of the French generals, these astonish

It is with great pleasure that we welcome to our pages a battle study by Mr. Fitchett. Mr. Fitchett is well known throughout the great English world of the Southern Hemisphere by his vigorous and picturesque interpretation of the heroic side of our history. His work, however, has as yet obtained little recognition in England-solely because it has not been published here. This is an omission which is, we are glad to hear, about to be repaired. We venture to predict that Deeds that won the Empire,' when it does appear in this country, will be as much appreciated here as in Australia. Mr. Fitchett has the power of making history interesting, and may fairly claim to be the inheritor of Macaulay's tradition. Ed. CORNHILL.

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