epithet beggar stung her to the quick. The blood of her deceased mother, who was reckoned among her neighbours a woman of high spirit, rushed to her cheek, and her mild eyes seemed to lose their softness as the tide of anger set in.

He

"Sirrah!" she cried, making a menacing gesture with her little white fist. Begone! you shall not use this language here. whom you thus vilify does not deserve your reproaches, and it is well for you that he is not present to hear them."

Richard snapped his fingers contemptuously. "Ay," she continued, "snap your fingers, sirrah; you can show your mettle here, where there is only a poor weak girl to rebuke you; but know, young man, I am not to be terrified by your threats. I care little for the hopes of a hair-brained boy who is led by his wild companions, and, as I know my father would never have me wed one whom I abhor, I tell thee I have given my heart to Valentine."

The ruddy, saucy face of Richard Furnival became pale as death with intensity of passion on hearing this, to him, too candid avowal. He bent on his sister a look of the deadliest malice, which made her quail with apprehension; then suddenly advancing, he grasped her arm and dragged her to the window.

"Thou giddy fool!" said he, wrathfully; "I could strangle thee for thine obstinacy. See'st thou that grim stage yonder?"

He pointed, as he spoke, to the ancient bridge in the distance, crowded with buildings, among which the traitors' towers were grimly conspicuous: their then never-failing ornaments, about a dozen human heads, elevated upon long poles, rose high above the roof, and over them were several carrion crows, wheeling in circling eddies around their horrible banquet. & "See!" he cried, "there is room enough on those towers for another head, and I promise thee thy Valentine's shall be there ere Candlemas!" With these words he relinquished her arm and hastily quitted the room. Anna listened

to his footsteps as he descended the stairs, and as the sound ceased the poor maiden threw herself into a chair and released her overcharged heart by a violent flood of tears.

CHAPTER II.

THE SANCTUARY.

"What a rable of theeves, murtherers and malitious heynous traytors, and that in two places specially. The tone at the elbowe of the citie, the tother in the verie bowels."

THE above sentences, uttered by the Duke of Buckingham, in his speech at the council, when Glo'ster wished to remove the young princes from the sanctuary of Westminster, give a vivid picture of those haunts of vice and crime, the sanctuaries of the middle ages. "One of these," he remarks, "was at the elbow of the city," (Westminster), the other "in the very bowels;" which latter was the famous sanctuary of St. Martin-le-Grand, comprising, as shown by honest Stow, the en

tire area enclosed between Newgate Street on the south, Foster Lane on the east, Bull and Mouth Street and St. Ann's Lane on the north,

and on the west by a number of crowded tenements occupied by inferior tradesmen and artificers. The existence of such a place in the heart of the city was a grievous evil, which long vexed the quietly-disposed citizens of London, and many ingenious attempts were made from time to time by the city authorities to show that the privilege was one of long use and custom, rather than of regal permission. But these efforts to dislodge and bring to justice felons who had sought shelter from the law within its precincts were stoutly resisted, and quo warrantos were met by the exhibition of charters of inspeximus, or recapitulations of former confirmations of the privileges of the deanery," from the tyme of no mynde" back to the days of the Saxon monarchs.

However great the evil, the place afforded too fine a revenue to the priests to be yielded up. They let out lodgings to the sanctuary men at a high rate, and often seized upon