a high-principled and kindly-natured boy, two years my senior. He and I became fast friends; we were, in fact, inseparables. We read, studied chemistry, walked and played together. He was pale and dark-haired, but could boast of handsome, regular features, a decidedly Grecian cast of countenance. His eyes were large and black, and his forehead was high, but narrow. He gained an ascendancy over me at first for which I cannot now account. His address was polite, and free from that doubtful hesitation and uncertainty by which one is sometimes enabled to detect the double-dealer. His honesty was apparent by his anxiety to account for every farthing that passed through his hands. My father sometimes told him laughingly that he should be the chief cashier of the firm of Winbourne, Son, and Reginald. I regarded him as my particular friend; Mr, Kerford alone seemed to have some distant doubts about him.
'The state of London at that time cannot be well or faithfully described. Startling events succeeded each other with rapidity, and the constant arrival of couriers from the army was hailed by the people with ever-varying emotions. The city rang with shouts of joy when it became known that the army of the Parliament had achieved a victory. The Battle of Marston Moor, in which Cromwell established his growing fame, gave rise to the greatest joy. The execution of Archbishop Laud took many of the more enlightened citizens by surprise, and showed them plainly to what extreme lengths the Parliament was determined to go. Then came the news of the successes of Montrose in Scotland, at which they pulled long faces: and then came the fatal battle of Naseby, where the power and the hopes of the unhappy King perished for ever.
Years passed away, and the bitter end drew near, but no sensible man thought for a moment that that dreadful
