in allegiance; and when they could be once brought to sneer at the book, there was an end of submission to the master.  Parley had not penetration enough to see his drift.  “As to the book, Mr. Flatterwell,” said he, “I do not know whether it be true or false; I rather neglect than disbelieve it.  I am forced, indeed, to hear it read once a week; but I never look into it myself, if I can help it.”  “Excellent,” said Flatterwell to himself; “that is just the same thing.  This is safe ground for me.  For whether a man does not believe in the book, or does not attend to it, it comes pretty much to the same, and I generally get him at last.”

“Why cannot we be a little nearer, Mr. Parley?” said Flatterwell; “I am afraid of being overheard by some of your master’s spies, the window from which you speak is so high.  I wish you would come down to the door.”

“Well,” said Parley, “I see no great harm in that.  There is a little wicket in the door, through which we can converse with more ease and equal safety.  The same fastenings will be still between us.”  So down he went, but not without a degree of fear and trembling.

The little wicket being now opened, and Flatterwell standing close on the outside of the door, they conversed with great ease.  “Mr. Parley,” said Flatterwell, “I should not have pressed you so much to admit me into the castle, but out of pure, disinterested regard to your own happiness.  I shall get nothing by it, but I cannot bear to think that a person so wise and amiable should be shut up in this gloomy dungeon, under a hard master, and a slave to the unreasonable tyranny of his book of laws.  If you admit me, you need have no more waking, no more watching.”

Here Parley involuntarily slipped back the bolt of the door.

“To convince you of my true love,” continued Flatterwell, “I have brought a bottle of the most delicious wine that grows in the wilderness.  You shall taste it; but you must put a glass through the wicket to receive it; for it is a singular property in this wine, that we of the wilderness cannot succeed in conveying it to you of the castle, without you hold out a vessel to receive it.”

“O here is a glass,” said Parley, holding out a large goblet, which he always kept ready to be filled by any chance comer.

The other immediately poured into the capacious goblet a large draught of that delicious intoxicating liquor with which the family of the Flatterwells have, for near six thousand years, gained the hearts and destroyed the souls of all the inhabitants of the castle, whenever they have been able to prevail on them to hold out a hand to receive it.  This the wise master of the castle well knew would be the case, for he knew what was in men—­he knew their propensity to receive the delicious poison of the Flatterwells; and it was for this reason that he gave them the book of his laws, and planted the hedge, and invented the bolts, and doubled the locks.