new anathema against the fatal umbrella rise to his lips.

"Ah!" quoth the second, "I trust that it may be so; but, to return to
our project, are you quite sure that these two identical ministers are
in the regular habit of walking homeward from that Parliament which
their despotism has so degraded?"

"Sure? ay, that I am; Davidson swears to it!"

"And you are also sure of their persons, so that, even in the dusk,
you can recognize them? for you know I have never seen them."

"Sure as fivepence!" returned the first speaker, to whose mind the
lives of the persons referred to were of considerably less value than
the sum elegantly specified in his metaphorical reply.

"Then," said the other, with a deep, stern determination of tone,
"then shall this hand, by which one of the proudest of our oppressors
has already fallen, be made a still worthier instrument of the wrath
of Heaven!"

"You are a d--d pretty shot, I believe," quoth the first speaker, as
indifferently as if he were praising the address of a Norfolk squire.

"Never did my eye misguide me, or my aim swerve a hair's-breadth from
its target! I thought once, when I learned the art as a boy, that in
battle, rather than in the execution of a single criminal, that skill
would avail me."

"Well, we shall have a glorious opportunity to-morrow night!" answered