‘So goodbye,’ said Nicholas; ‘goodbye, goodbye.’

‘DOTHEBOYS HALL, ‘THURSDAY MORNING.

During this discourse, Prince John had gradually awakened from the stupor into which he had been thrown by the unexpected intelligence, and had been attentive to the conversation which passed betwixt his followers. "They fall off from me," he said to himself, "they hold no more by me than a withered leaf by the bough when a breeze blows on it! --- Hell and fiends! can I shape no means for myself when I am deserted by these cravens?"---He paused, and there was an expression of diabolical passion in the constrained laugh with which he at length broke in on their conversation.