Bessus. —’Tis a challenge, sir, is it not?

Gentleman. —’Tis an inviting¹ to the field.

King and No King.

For a day or two after this forcible expulsion from the vicarage, Mr. Solsgrace continued his residence at Moultrassie Hall, where the natural melancholy² attendant on his situation added to the gloom of the owner of the mansion³. In the morning, the ejected divine made excursions to different families in the neighbourhood, to whom his ministry⁴ had been acceptable in the days of his prosperity, and from whose grateful recollections of that period he now found sympathy and consolation⁵. He did not require to be condoled⁶ with, because he was deprived of an easy and competent maintenance, and thrust out upon the common of life, after he had reason to suppose he would be no longer liable to such mutations of fortune. The piety⁸ of Mr. Solsgrace was sincere; and if he had many of the uncharitable prejudices against other sects⁹, which polemical controversy¹⁰ had generated, and the Civil War brought to a head, he had also that deep sense of duty, by which enthusiasm is so often dignified¹¹, and held his very life little, if called upon to lay it down in attestation¹² of the doctrines¹³ in which he believed. But he was soon to prepare for leaving the district which Heaven, he conceived, had assigned to him as his corner of the vineyard; he was to abandon his flock to the wolf — was to

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