This is the time—Heaven's sentinel
  Hath quitted her high watch—the spangles
  Are paling one by one; give me the ladder
  And the short lever—bid Anthony
  Keep with his carabine the wicket-gate;
  And do thou bare thy knife and follow me,
  For we will in and do it—darkness like this
  Is dawning of our fortunes.
                           Old Play. 
In this operation he was a second time interrupted by a knocking at the door—he called upon the person to enter, having no doubt that it was Lowestoffe's messenger at length arrived. It was, however, the ungracious daughter of old Trapbois, who, muttering something about her father's mistake, laid down upon the table one of the pieces of gold which Nigel had just given to him, saying, that what she retained was the full rent for the term he had . Nigel replied, he had paid the money, and had no desire to receive it again.
 
“Do as you will with it, then,” replied his hostess, “for there it lies, and shall lie for me. If you are fool enough to pay more than is reason, my father shall not be enough to take it.”
 
“But your father, mistress,” said Nigel, “your father told me—”
 
“Oh, my father, my father,” said she, interrupting him,—“my father managed these affairs while he was able—I manage them now, and that may in the long run be as well for both of us.”
 
She then looked on the table, and observed the weapons.
 
“You have arms, I see,” she said; “do you know how to use them?”
 
“I should do so mistress,” replied Nigel, “for it has been my occupation.”
 
“You are a soldier, then?” she demanded.
 
“No farther as yet, than as every gentleman of my country is a soldier.”
 
“Ay, that is your point of honour—to cut the throats of the poor—a proper gentlemanlike occupation for those who should protect them!”
 
“I do not deal in cutting throats, mistress,” replied Nigel; “but I carry arms to defend myself, and my country if it needs me.”
 
“Ay,” replied Martha, “it is fairly worded; but men say you are as prompt as others in petty , where neither your safety nor your country is in hazard; and that had it not been so, you would not have been in the to-day.”
 
“Mistress,” returned Nigel, “I should labour in vain to make you understand that a man's honour, which is, or should be, dearer to him than his life, may often call on and compel us to hazard our own lives, or those of others, on what would otherwise seem .”
 
“God's law says of that,” said the female; “I have only read there, that thou shall not kill. But I have neither time nor to preach to you—you will find enough of fighting here if you like it, and well if it come not to seek you when you are least prepared. Farewell for the present—the char-woman will execute your commands for your meals.”
 
She left the room, just as Nigel, provoked at her assuming a superior tone of and of , was about to be so as to enter into a dispute with an old pawnbroker's daughter on the subject of the point of honour. He smiled at himself for the into which the spirit of self-vindication had so nearly hurried him.
 
Lord Glenvarloch then to old Deborah the char-woman, by whose intermediation he was provided with a tolerably decent dinner; and the only which he experienced, was from the almost forcible entry of the old dotard his landlord, who insisted upon giving his assistance at laying the cloth. Nigel had some difficulty to prevent him from displacing his arms and some papers which were lying on a small table at which he had been sitting; and nothing short of a stern and positive injunction to the contrary could compel him to use another board (though there were two in the room) for the purpose of laying the cloth.
 
Having at length obliged him to his purpose, he could not help observing that the eyes of the old dotard seemed still anxiously upon the small table on which lay his sword and pistols; and that, amidst all the little duties which he seemed officiously anxious to render to his guest, he took every opportunity of looking towards and approaching these objects of his attention. At length, when Trapbois thought he had completely avoided the notice of his guest, Nigel, through the observation of one of the cracked mirrors, oh which channel of communication the old man had not calculated, him actually extend his hand towards the table in question. He thought it unnecessary to use further ceremony, but telling his landlord, in a stern voice, that he permitted no one to touch his arms, he commanded him to leave the apartment. The old usurer commenced a maundering sort of apology, in which all that Nigel distinctly , was a frequent repetition of the word consideration, and which did not seem to him to require any other answer than a of his command to him to leave the apartment, upon pain of worse consequences.
 
The ancient Hebe who acted as Lord Glenvarloch's cup-bearer, took his part against the intrusion of the still more Ganymede, and insisted on old Trapbois leaving the room instantly, menacing him at the same time with her mistress's displeasure if he remained there any longer. The old man seemed more under petticoat government than any other, for the threat of the char-woman produced greater effect upon him than the more formidable displeasure of Nigel. He withdrew and muttering, and Lord Glenvarloch heard him bar a large door at the nearer end of the gallery, which served as a division betwixt the other parts of the extensive , and the apartment occupied by his guest, which, as the reader is aware, had its access from the landing-place at the head of the grand staircase.
 
Nigel accepted the careful sound of the bolts and bars as they were severally by the trembling hand of old Trapbois, as an that the senior did not mean again to revisit him in the course of the evening, and rejoiced that he was at length to be left to uninterrupted .
 
The old woman asked if there was aught else to be done for his accommodation; and, indeed, it had hitherto seemed as if the pleasure of serving him, or more properly the reward which she expected, had renewed her youth and activity. Nigel desired to have candles, to have a fire lighted in his apartment, and a few fagots placed beside it, that he might feed it from time to time, as he began to feel the effects of the damp and low situation of the house, close as it was to the Thames. But while the old woman was absent upon his errand, he began to think in what way he should pass the long evening with which he was threatened.
 
His own reflections promised to Nigel little amusement, and less applause. He had considered his own situation in every light in which it could be viewed, and foresaw as little utility as comfort in resuming the survey. To divert the current of his ideas, books were, of course, the readiest resource; and although, like most of us, Nigel had, in his time, sauntered through large libraries, and even spent a long time there without greatly disturbing their learned contents, he was now in a situation where the possession of a volume, even of very inferior merit, becomes a real treasure. The old housewife returned shortly afterwards with fagots, and some pieces of half-burnt wax-candles, the , probably, real or , of some experienced of the , two of which she placed in large candlesticks, of different shapes and patterns, and laid the others on the table, that Nigel might renew them from time to time as they burnt to the . She heard with interest Lord Glenvarloch's request to have a book—any sort of book—to pass away the night withal, and returned for answer, that she knew of no other books in the house than her young mistress's (as she always denominated Mistress Martha Trapbois) Bible, which the owner would not lend; and her master's Whetstone of Witte, being the second part of Arithmetic, by Robert Record, with the Cossike Practice and Rule of Equation; which volume Nigel declined to borrow. She offered, however, to bring him some books from Duke Hildebrod—“who sometimes, good gentleman, gave a glance at a book when the State affairs of Alsatia left him as much leisure.”
 
Nigfil embraced the proposal, and his unwearied away on this second embassy. She returned in a short time with a quarto volume under her arm, and a bottle of sack in her hand; for the Duke, judging that reading was dry work, had sent the wine by way of sauce to help it down, not forgetting to add the price to the morning's score, which he had already run up against the stranger in the Sanctuary.
 
Nigel seized on the book, and did not refuse the wine, thinking that a glass or two, as it really proved to be of good quality, would be no bad interlude to his studies. He dismissed, with thanks and assurance of reward, the poor old who had been so in his service; trimmed his fire and candles, and placed the easiest of the old arm-chairs in a convenient betwixt the fire and the table at which he had dined, and which now supported the measure of sack and the lights; and thus accompanying his studies with such appliances as were in his power, he began to examine the only volume with which the ducal library of Alsatia had been able to supply him.
 
The contents, though of a kind generally interesting, were not well calculated to the gloom by which he was surrounded. The book was entitled “God's Revenge against Murther;” not, as the bibliomaniacal reader may easily , the work which Reynolds published under that name, but one of a much earlier date, printed an............