You have found letters that must have been placed there by some scoundrel, who plotted my ruin.

I assert to you, on the honour of a gentleman, that no such letters have ever met my eye, and that, if such a proposition had been made to me, I care not by whom, I would have struck to the ground the man who offered me such an insult.' "'We are sorry, Sir Marmaduke Carstairs,' Mr.Peters said, 'most sorry, both of us, that it should have fallen to our duty to take so painful a proceeding against a neighbour; but, you see, the matter is beyond us.

We have received a sworn information that you are engaged in such a plot.

We are told that you are in the habit of locking up papers of importance in a certain cabinet, and there we find papers of a most damnatory kind.

We most sincerely trust that you may be able to prove your innocence in the matter, but we have nothing to do but to take you with us, as a prisoner, to Lancaster.' "Sir Marmaduke unbuckled his sword, and laid it by.