with a P, besides having their goods confiscated, and the trees in their woods rooted up.  Those who did not inform against the Comprachicos were to be punished by confiscation and imprisonment for life, as for the crime of misprision.  As for the women found among these men, they were to suffer the cucking-stool—­this is a tumbrel, the name of which is composed of the French word coquine, and the German stuhl.  English law being endowed with a strange longevity, this punishment still exists in English legislation for quarrelsome women.  The cucking-stool is suspended over a river or a pond, the woman seated on it.  The chair is allowed to drop into the water, and then pulled out.  This dipping of the woman is repeated three times, “to cool her anger,” says the commentator, Chamberlayne.

PART I.

BOOK THE FIRST.

NIGHT NOT SO BLACK AS MAN.

CHAPTER I.

PORTLAND BILL.

An obstinate north wind blew without ceasing over the mainland of Europe, and yet more roughly over England, during all the month of December, 1689, and all the month of January, 1690.  Hence the disastrous cold weather, which caused that winter to be noted as “memorable to the poor,” on the margin of the old Bible in the Presbyterian chapel of the Nonjurors in London.  Thanks to the lasting qualities of the old monarchical parchment employed in official registers, long lists of poor persons, found dead of famine and cold, are still legible in many local repositories, particularly in the archives of the Liberty of the Clink, in the borough of Southwark, of Pie Powder Court (which signifies Dusty Feet Court), and in those of Whitechapel Court, held in the village of Stepney by the bailiff of the Lord of the Manor.  The Thames was frozen over—­a thing which does not happen once in a century, as the ice forms on it with difficulty owing to the action of the sea.  Coaches rolled over the frozen river, and a fair was held with booths, bear-baiting, and bull-baiting.  An ox was roasted whole on the ice.  This thick ice lasted two months.  The hard year 1690 surpassed in severity even the famous winters at the beginning of the seventeenth century, so minutely observed by Dr. Gideon Delane—­the same who was, in his quality of apothecary to King James, honoured by the city of London with a bust and a pedestal.

One evening, towards the close of one of the most bitter days of the month of January, 1690, something unusual was going on in one of the numerous inhospitable bights of the bay of Portland, which caused the sea-gulls and wild geese to scream and circle round its mouth, not daring to re-enter.