The calm deliberation with which the cavalier
had opened and applied himself to read the familiar
letter of his trusty fellow-traveller, gave way,
long ere he had concluded, to manifest and restless
eagerness; and if he read it through before he tore
asunder the fastenings of the larger packet, it was
rather that he hoped within itself to find a clew
whereby to solve its mystery, than that he was indifferent
to learn what was the nature of the call
to which his friend alluded. But when he closed
it, still in ignorance of that which it behooved him
most to know, his colour went and came, and his
heart beat quick as he turned hastily to the sole
remaining source of information. The paper that
first caught his eye on opening the packet was a
fair document, in large clear characters, engrossed
on vellum, and purporting to be an invitation from
the freeholders of the good town of Huntingdon
to Edgar Ardenne, that he would present himself
a candidate to fill the seat as member for their
borough in the most worshipful the commons
House of Parliament, lately made vacant by the untimely
death of their regretted and right trusty delegate,
Elias Chaloner. The second was a brief
explanatory statement, signed by the mayor and
several of the leading burghers of the town, assuring
him, that all he had to do in order to secure
election was to make known to them his willingness
to serve in parliament, as no other candidate
was in the field; nor, if there were, could any have
the smallest chance of coping with success against
a nominee so universally admired and approved by
every class of voters. No pledge was asked—no
line of conduct indicated, to which it was expected
that he should adhere—no query hinted at, concerning
his attachment to either of the parties, between
which the whole of England was at that

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

time divided. They were sufficiently assured, the
letter stated, of the integrity, the wisdom, and the
constancy of him on whom their choice had fallen;
so well assured, that they were perfectly content,
without condition specified or question asked, to
place their interests, their hopes, their fortunes,
and, if need were, their lives, at his disposal. In
mute astonishment he read successively these several
documents; and still, the more he read, the
more his wonder and his doubts increased. That
he, who had been absent from the land of his fathers
almost from the day on which he first wrote
man—that he, unstamped by any public act or private
declaration; uncommitted to any party or
opinion, nay, undecided, for aught that the world
knew, in his own mind as to which cause he should
espouse in the approaching contest, foreseen by
him as by all men endowed with ordinary prescience
of events—that he should be thus summoned,
within two weeks of his arrival in his native
country, and that without a pledge, to fill a
place the most conspicuous to which a private individual
can well aspire—that he should be thus
eminently trusted, and by men whose very names
were strangers to his ears; whose town he had
never even entered save as a passing traveller;
whose principles, but from the somewhat formal
and affected plainness of their style, together with
the unseemly garments and austere demeanour of
their messenger, he had no means of so much as
conjecturing; and who, so far as he could comprehend,
must be still more at a loss to judge of the
parts or principles of him, to whom they had so
confidently offered the representation of their interests,
the proxy of their united voices;—all this
was indeed sufficiently embarrassing, nay, unaccountable
at any time; and the more so at a period

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

when political intrigue and treachery were rife, beyond
all precedent, among the men reputed as the
leaders in the councils of the nation. That such a
call was flattering, and that in a degree not trivial
or accustomed, could not be doubted or denied,
but while he felt that sweetest, most ennobling of
sensations, the conviction that his character was
understood and his worth appreciated by his fellow-citizens,
mingled with a high consciousness that
his eloquence, his learning, and experience might
indeed minister not smally to the welfare of his
country, Ardenne was yet perplexed, anxious, and
doubtful.

Nor did it seem that he was destined easily or
by any effort of his own to extricate himself from
this uncertainty; for when, after musing long and
vainly on the import of the letters, he turned for
information to the messenger, that worthy, doubtless
resenting with all the rancour of a petty mind
the merited rebuke of Edgar, wrapped himself up
in such a veil of real or pretended dulness as defied
every species of cross-examination applied to
wring from his fanatic obstinacy the reluctant truth.

He had been sent, he said, an hired messenger,
to carry certain missives, not to expound enigmas,
nor to illuminate the darkness of those whom, it
might be, Jehovah had for their sins involved in
the dark night of ignorance. He knew not aught
of the matter; nor, if he had known, should he
have deemed it fitting to reveal that which those
worthy persons, his employers, had found it meet
to leave uncertain. The burgh of Huntingdon, he
answered, when Edgar varied the subject and the
manner of his investigation—the burgh of Huntingdon
was a true town and godly—its late member,
good Elias Chaloner, a man learned beyond
his fellows, not in the vain and carnal lore of the

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

idolatrous and God-defying heathen, but in the pure
and sanctifying wisdom of the gospel! Of its politics
he knew not any thing, nor cared. Some cavaliers
there were—debosht rakehelly profligates—
such as the Knight of Hinchinbrook, uncle of worthy
Master Cromwell, now sitting in the commons
house for the right saintly town of Cambridge, and
others not a few. But of a truth the citizens,
craftsmen, and artisans, ay, and the mayor and
council, were pious and God-fearing men, seeking
the Lord alway, day and night, in prayer and meditation.
For the rest, if it were so that they had
summoned Master Ardenne to be their deputy in
parliament, verily theirs was the power to do so—
ay, and they knew right well the wherefore! They
were not men, he trowed, to leap i' the dark and to
repent at leisure. If Master Ardenne thought it
good to suit himself to this promotion, his, as was
very fitting, would be the honour and advancement.
If not, the men of Huntingdon would be at little
trouble to elect as good if not an abler statesman
to represent their voices.

In this unsatisfied and dubious state of mind
Edgar, with his uncourtly comrade, arrived at the
park gates; and, quickening his pace, rode hastily
along the noble avenue of elms to the main entrance,
flung his rein to a groom, and consigning
his companion to the attentions of the gray-headed
steward, passed with a hurried and irregular step
to his own chamber; there, in undisturbed and silent
solitude, to ponder on his singular position.
An hour fled by, as with his head propped on his
hands, and his eyes fixed on the characters of
which his mind however took no note, he racked
his brain with almost hopeless efforts to conjecture
who might be the secret movers in this matter.
That his friend Milton had ever been an ardent

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

votary of liberty, in its most liberal and extended
sense—a dreamer of those bright utopian visions
concerning perfect commonwealths and absolute
equality of man, which, in whatever age or country,
never have been—never can be realized—a modeller
of constitutions excellent in contemplation, but
untested by experience; or, if tested by the self-styled
republics, but real aristocracies, of early
Rome or earlier Greece, proved only to be fickle,
changeful, and unstable, Ardenne well knew;—and
often with delighted ears had listened, and with
a mind that yielded to the inthralling grandeur of
those theoretic dreamings, while it perceived their
fallacy, to the deep-souled and burning eloquence
with which he loved to advocate his wild but
splendid projects. He had moreover heard, that
subsequently to his return from Italy, the sage enthusiast
had devoted himself with stern and self-denying
application to the maintenance of the
most rigid puritanic forms of Protestant morality
and doctrines against the laxer customs of the
Church of England, at that time assimilating itself
daily more and more, through the bigoted obstinacy
of its reckless monarch, and of that most
dangerous of all his counsellors, the haughty and
half papish Laud, to the detested ritual and creed
of Rome. Nor could he doubt, well as he was
informed of the almost inseparable league between
puritanism in religion and the love of freedom in
the state, that the already celebrated author of
“Reformation in England,” and “the Reason of
Church Government,” was no less strongly interested
in opposition to that extension of prerogative,
already stretched to the very verge of absolute and
irresponsible autocracy, than his illustrious admirers
and associates, Hampden and Pym. Still he
could not easily give credence to the fancy, that

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

Milton only—for to him alone, of all those patriots
with whom his spirit sympathized so warmly in
their devoted struggles in behalf of England's constitution,
was he personally or intimately known—
should have possessed the power to procure him
that untrammelled offer of a seat, which individuals
of far greater eminence might have been proud to
occupy. Amid these painful meditations too there
ran a mingled strain of deeper, because more
personal, disquietude—an agonizing apprehension,
amounting almost to a certainty, that a seat in parliament,
entailing on him, as it necessarily must,
the highest of all moral obligations—binding him,
with fetters stronger a hundred-fold than the poetic
adamant, to the upholding of that cause which his
mature unbiased judgment should deem right—
must set him on the instant in direct unnatural opposition
to his father; and yet worse, must sever
him from her whose love he surely prized above
all mortal blessings. It was in vain that he attempted
to shake off the leaden weight of this
dark apprehension—it was to no purpose that hope
whispered to his bosom how all might yet be well—
it was to no purpose that he strove to reconcile
the diverse paths of duty and of pleasure. A dozen
times he took his pen in hand to write an answer
to the perplexing invitation; and as often threw it
from him in utter inability to frame a single sentence.
Once, at suggestion of his warmer passions,
and yielding to the persuasion of that single
grain of selfishness, which must still lurk in every
bosom, even of the best and purest, his fingers
traced three lines of absolute denial; but, ere the
clause was finished, the juster sense returned, and
the torn sheet was in an instant shrivelling amid
the logs that crackled on the hearthstone. “No,
no!” he cried aloud, in the low husky tones which

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

tell so fearfully of inward agony. “No, no—my
country—never will I betray thee at thine utmost
need!—What though my heart be broken in the
strife—what though I lose all things that make this
earth a paradise and not a hell—what though I perish—
or, yet worse, live homeless, friendless, fatherless,
deserted—hated by whom I most adore, and
cursed by whom I bless—what though I, I, one
man and for one little life, must bear all anguish
that a life can compass,—shall I for this shrink
back, knowing that England needs the voice, the
hand, the soul of every son she has, to save her
from destruction—to redeem her living millions—
her millions yet unborn—from countless centuries
of servitude and sorrow! The cup—the cup is
filled! God grant me strength to drain it—ay, to
the very dregs!” And with a calm unfaltering
hand he drew a brief but full acceptance of the
trust so proffered to his choice,—pledging himself
to act, so long as he should represent their voices,
so, and so only, as his own heart should dictate.
“I would,” he wrote, “before investing myself
with the great and onerous responsibility you wish
to impose upon me—I would that you should
clearly know and apprehend my principles and
rule of action. All party I disclaim—all preconceived
opinion from my soul I disavow! To hold
the freedom of our land inviolate—of our religion
pure, I do esteem the first of duties. But the
freedom which I look to—I do pray you mark me
now, so shall there be no blame hereafter—is the
freedom of our British Constitution, not the licentious
anarchy of democratic innovation—and the
religion which I will maintain is the religion of my
fathers—the reformed church of England, equally
aloof from the debasing superstitions of the Romish
creed, and from the stern fanaticism of Lutheran

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

or Calvinistic sectaries. If, then, on knowing these
my tenets both of church and state, ye make it
your election still to go forward in this matter, I
shall so labour—with such powers both of mind and
body as God in his good wisdom has assigned
me—as I may deem the fittest to secure unto ourselves,
and unto our posterity for ever, the blessings
of a government at once liberal and firm—of a religion
pure, no less than tolerant and free. If, on
the other hand, ye doubt in aught my motives, or
disapprove my principles as stated heretofore—if
ye do look that I should yield at any time, or under
any circumstance, my own conviction to the
opinion or the prejudice of others—even of yourselves,
my own constituents—then make at once a
fresh selection, choosing a man more suited to
your purposes; accepting in meanwhile my high
consideration of the honour ye have done me, in
thus summoning me, as yet a stranger, to the highest
station of your trust.”

Scarcely had he concluded his epistle, ere a
quick heavy footstep sounded through the corridor—
approached his chamber door, and paused beside
it, followed by a short firm tap upon the oaken panel.
“Now comes the crisis of my fate,” inwardly
muttered Ardenne, as, recognising on the instant
the footstep of his father, he hurried to admit
him.

“So studious, Edgar?” cried the veteran;
“plunged to your very neck in parchments!—The
matter must, I trow, be all-important, that should
have won you homeward from such music as was
ringing in your ears, when you this morning left us
in the Vale of Bardsey! 'Fore George, but he ran
gallantly and straight, poor dapple!—turned him to
bay in the Witch hollow beneath Leader hill—gored
brindled Mortimer to the death ere I came up with

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

him, and hurt some six or eight of the others.
What in the fiend's name called you home? What
clouds your face even now so darkly? Speak, Edgar,
hast ill tidings?”

“Not ill, sir, not ill tidings, but of weighty import,”
answered Ardenne, as his father threw himself
upon a massive settle in the chimney corner;
“and such as have urged on me much grave thought
ere I might answer them!” and, as he spoke, he
tendered to his hand the invitation from the burgh
of Huntingdon. “Here, if my visage be o'ercast,
here shall you find the cause—and this, when you
shall have perused the first, contains my answer.”

With deep anxiety did the eye of Edgar dwell
upon the keen intelligent features of the aged man,
fitfully lighted up by the uncertain gleams from the
piled hearth—for evening had crept on them unperceived,
and the sky was growing dark apace—as
he read the letters by the firelight. Changes there
were indeed upon the broad unwrinkled forehead,
chasing each other over it in quick succession—
now a deep frown corded the muscles of the brow,
but more perhaps from the effects of thought than
from disgust or anger—anon it was relaxed, and a
more bland expression played around the mouth,
and the full open eye shone cheerfully. Again
the glance was clouded, and the lip curled in scorn,
till every hair of his mustache worked as it were
instinct with life.

“The roundhead scurvy villains!” he exclaimed
at length, striking the extended parchment forcibly
with the forefinger of his right hand; “the base
mechanical burghers!—I marvel they should dare
pollute a gentleman's ear with their accursed puritanic
cant. You have refused them, Edgar—indignantly
hurled back their most insulting proffer in
their teeth! Is it not so?—now, on your life, say
ay!”

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

“I see it not in this light, sir,” Edgar replied,
respectfully but firmly; “I see it not at all in this
light—nor is there aught, to my poor comprehension,
either of cant or insult in this invitation.”

“Doubtless you have accepted it—this flattering
invitation!” interrupted the old man, with an expression
of the most bitter irony; “doubtless you have!”

“I have accepted it,” calmly returned his son;
“I have indeed accepted it, nor can I possibly
conceive—”

“You have not, Edgar Ardenne,” his father
almost shouted, as he sprang to his feet, spurning
the footstool from beneath them to the farther corner
of the room; “you have not dared to do so!
You! you! an Ardenne—heir to some twenty
generations of high-minded, noble, loyal cavaliers—
you blend yourself with the foul puddle blood of
craftsmen and pinched beggarly mechanics—you
band yourself with hypocrites and traitors against
your church, your country, and your king!—No,
no!—it can not be!”

“Indeed! indeed! it could not,” replied Edgar,
in tones almost femininely soothing; “indeed it
could not be, that I should ever mix myself with
aught degenerate or base, much less with aught
unprincipled or traitorous. But, of a truth, my
father, I apprehend not any thing—though straining
to the utmost of my understanding—I apprehend
not any thing here written to imply aught
that can by any means be tortured into treason or
fanaticism. Nay, for my part, I find not aught that
would restrain me, if I should be so minded, from
degrading loyalty, even as the member for this
very borough, into most prostrate oriental slavishness—
from bartering our reformed religion for
Romish superstition! A seat is proffered to me
freely—without condition, pledge, or hint of any

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

interference. Nay! the constituents aver that
they refer themselves in all things to my judgment—
submit themselves to absolute dictation of my
individual will. Now, sir, it seems to me—I pray
you so far pardon me as to permit me speak to
the end—it seems to me, if—as I see no cause to
deem them such—these men of Huntingdon be
fanatics and traitors, there cannot be a better mode
of frustrating their ill intentions, than that I, who
most assuredly am neither, should accept their
offer, and represent their bigoted and treasonable
voices by a most tolerant and patriotic vote!”

Sir Henry's passions had displayed their progress
on his features during his son's rejoinder
even more strongly and with more definite changes
than before. At the first, every line and feature
was inflamed almost to bursting with fierce and
fiery indignation—varying as Edgar proceeded to
that air of obstinate unwilling coolness with which
a man resigns himself to some infliction which he
may not avoid. Then, as the truth of what was
said impressed itself by slow degrees upon his
senses, he listened with attention approaching
somewhat to respect, till, when the last sentence
fell upon his ear, and he fancied that the full policy
of his son was there disclosed to him, the mighty
satisfaction flashed from his whole face as he exclaimed—

“Excellent! I was dull indeed! excellent!
Edgar; and so `hoist the knave engineers, e'en
with their own petard!' 'Fore George but you
surpass, not your old father's talents only—that
you did ever—but his uttermost wishes! And so,
when the fool puritans would have you rob the
church and manacle the king, vote like a loyal
cavalier!—Now out on me for an old superannuated
dolt that would not hear or comprehend!”

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

“Nay, sir; but even now,” said Edgar, not a
little astonished by this ebullition of mistaken
pleasure—“even now you do misapprehend me
somewhat. I have accepted this same seat in the
Commons, giving the men of Huntingdon to know
that I will hold myself responsible to no authority
save that of my own conscience. Party, or place,
I hold not to, nor covet. In all high honour and in
all accordance with my own sense of just and right,
will I vote ever!—If these men should dare propose
to me, or hint that I should swerve one hair-breadth
from the course of truth and honour—then
would I surely disobey them—spit at them, and
spurn them. But, if they should prove honest, as
surely will I compromise no tittle of their interests
or their opinions; and so far am I from suspecting
aught of this, that I do well believe that my constituents
will prove right honest men and true—else,
under favour be it spoken, I deem it most unlikely
they should have fixed their choice on me—a man
perhaps not altogether void of some repute of honour,
and—if unknown myself—at least a scion of a
family that has not ever stooped to fraud or to disgrace!”

“Enough said! Edgar; enough said! I was a
fool to doubt thee;” and the old man grasped his
hand with warm affection as he answered, while a
tear slid down his withered cheek; “I was a fool to
doubt thee—for thou wert ever true and noble, as I
was ever over-choleric and rash. Some things too,
in good sooth, there are, that might be well amended!
This ship-money I like not altogether—nor these
violent forced subsidies—yet less like I the sordid
puritanic knaves who do oppose them, not that
they know or understand the evil of the measures
which they rail at, but that they would embarrass
and annoy, and, if their means were mated to their

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

will, perchance o'erturn the government from which
those measures emanate—not that they love their
country, but that they hate their king—because,
being base themselves, they loathe the very name
of what is high, or generous, or noble—because,
having naught to lose even in England's ruin, they
may gain all in the midst of uproar and confusion.
But enough said!—you shall receive their offer,
since so you will it, although I hold a promise of a
borough from my Lord of Middleton awaiting your
acceptance, for which—I speak it in all candour—
I would far rather have you member than for this
beggarly psalm-singing body corporate of Huntingdon.
But enough said!—Bear with me, Edgar, for
I am old, and choleric withal, and hasty! And now
to supper! For John, cook, will be foaming an
his goosepie be burnt, or his beef boiled to rags—
as with o'erflowing eyes he swore to me they
were last night, and all through fault of mine!”