to a household where you
have gold, as they say, by the eye.«
    »That jumps all with my humour,« replied Michael Lambourne; »and it only
remains that you tell me my master's name.«
    »My name is Master Richard Varney,« answered his companion.
    »But I mean,« said Lambourne, »the name of the noble lord to whose service
you are to prefer me.«
    »How, knave, art thou too good to call me master?« said Varney, hastily; »I
would have thee bold to others, but not saucy to me.«
    »I crave your worship's pardon,« said Lambourne; »but you seemed familiar
with Anthony Foster, now I am familiar with Anthony myself.«
    »Thou art a shrewd knave, I see,« replied Varney. »Mark me - I do indeed
propose to introduce thee into a nobleman's household; but it is upon my person
thou wilt chiefly wait, and upon my countenance that thou wilt depend. I am his
master of horse - Thou wilt soon know his name - it is one that shakes the
council and wields the state.«
    »By this light, a brave spell to conjure with,« said Lambourne, »if a man
would discover hidden treasures!«
    »Used with discretion, it may prove so,« replied Varney; »but mark - if thou
conjure with it at thine own hand, it may raise a devil who will tear thee in
fragments.«
    »Enough said,« replied Lambourne; »I will not exceed my limits.«
    The travellers then resumed the rapid rate of travelling which their
discourse had interrupted, and soon arrived at the Royal Park of Woodstock. This
ancient possession of the crown of England was then very different from what it
had been when it was the residence of the fair Rosamond, and the scene of Henry
the Second's secret and illicit amours; and yet more unlike to the scene which
it exhibits in the present day, when Blenheim House commemorates the victory of
Marlborough, and no less the genius of Vanburgh, though decried in his own time
by persons of taste far inferior to his own. It was, in Elizabeth's time, an
ancient mansion in bad repair, which had long ceased to be honoured with the
royal residence, to the great impoverishment of the adjacent village. The
inhabitants, however, had made several petitions to the Queen to have the favour
of the sovereign's countenance occasionally bestowed upon them; and upon this
very business, ostensibly