enormous

applied to the wound in his head. His hands and feet were unironed, although gyves of an weight lay upon the stone floor of the dungeon. He saw his visitors approach, apparently without concern, and instantly addressed them with as little ceremony.

"You are welcome, gentlemen; I have been expecting you: Sir William, pray be seated. My seats are not moveable, or I would hand you one. Mr. Colclough, oblige me by turning the shade of your lantern the other way the strong light hurts my eyes just now."

"You wished to see me, I understand," said the General, without taking any notice of the bold and forward address of the other; "the sooner you inform me of your motive the better."

"What I have to say is for your own ear, Sir William: there must be no third person between you and me." "You speak rather familiarly, sir."

"It is my way, General. I always do so, particularly when the information is on my side and ignorance on the other."

"There can be nothing between us that Mr. Colclough should not be a witness to."

"I think differently, Sir William," said the prisoner, with an air of cool scoundrelism in his manner that astonished his visitors.

The General rose to depart. "This man is fooling us, Mr. Colclough. Let us go."

"It is better perhaps to give him his way, Sir William," whispered the warder, "and after all, his information may be of such a character that his own safety might be compromised by its being revealed to more than one person-at least he may think so."

“True; I had forgotten that.” "When your conference is over, you can let yourself out: here are the keys."

"My family!" exclaimed the other with a sudden start. "Aye! your family, General. What's so odd in that?"

Nothing proceed," said Sir William, with a forced and unnatural composure in his manner.

"I have news, I say, about them." "You have told me as much already."

"And I am poor, Sir William,— do you understand me, now?"

"I think I do: you want to make a market of your information?" "Precisely so."

The General turned on his heel and smiled contemptuously, as he replied, "Your scheme is a shallow

one.

You can have no news, as you term it, that affects me, and if this was all you had to say, Mr. Colclough might as well have remained to hear it."

"Perhaps not-the loves of Ensign Kingsland and Mary Simpson would sell well if they were duly published."

The General started as if a musket shot had passed through him.

"That touches you, sir. You see I am not so barren of information as you seemed to imagine. I wished to speak with you of your wife and family."

"They are dead," said the General, ina low husky voice, as he approached the bench and bent his body nearly half way across it.

"They live, Sir William; but they live in penury and want."

"Where-where?" cried he, like one on whom some sudden burst of light had fallen and revealed the secret of a life of darkness, drear as the grave. "But no, no! Why do you trifle with the feelings of one whose years of worldly prosperity have been years of anguish and agony. It cannot be, the earth must first give up the bodies that the crawling things of the tomb have years ago battened upon."

"They live, Sir William : attend to me for a moment. When entering life, you loved Mary Simpson, and your love was too successful in a moment of weakness she listened to your serpent tongue, and became the victim of your wiles. The fruit of that folly was a boy."

The General groaned, and bowed

his head to the bench like one weighed down with a load of grief and remorse.

"On her shame becoming known, her kinsmen gathered round you; they were a wild and fierce people, and to save your life and hers, a marriage ceremony was performed between you. Am I not right?"

"Yes, yes! Oh God, wretch that I am. I suffer deservedly."

"You dared not, or you would not bring her to your home. Justice you had done her, but it was the tardy justice of necessity. To her love you returned scorn, and the victim that had become your wife you would not acknowledge before your family. Urged by pride-the fear of your connexion with the Simpsons becoming eventually known in the aristocratic circle of your acquaintance-perhaps by other causesHenry Kingsland became William Stradford,and procured a commission in a regiment proceeding to the East Indies, whither he embarked in secresy, at the time that his wife was about presenting him with another proof of her love, in the shape of a daughter."

The grey-haired man wept, and the big sobs burst from his bosom as Regan continued the narrative.

"The son grew up to manhood, and when he knew the blight that was upon his name, he learned to curse in bitterness the womb that bore him, and the paps that had suckled the bastard. Every effort that the fiend could prompt him to put in action to make her life miserable, wretched, and unhappy, has been a pleasure and a delight to him to do. He has been extravagant that she might taste the gall of poverty-he has branded her with her shame taunted her with your treachery and indifference: insulted and sneered at the purity of her daughter-endeavoured to rob her in the eyes of all men of that jewel of great price, her good name. Aye, sir, writhe you may, and clench your hands together, and bite your lip until the blood spring, but you have yet more to hear. Vengeance hath filled his heart against the guilty author of his being, and he has

sworn to lose all, soul and body, sooner than forego the hope of humbling the haughty heart of his father. The measure of his revenge is not yet completed."

"Young man, whoever you be," said the General, raising himself, and speaking in a slow and solemn manner, you have this night brought me down in the dust before youwhat man never did you have done. Oh, in mercy I implore you to point out to me where I may find the innocent sufferers of my pride and my crime. Let me but see them-let me but hear them speak that I may kneel before them and implore their blessing and forgiveness. Gold will I give you; more-I will secure your freedom - I have interest enough to do it, if you grant me this."

My freedom, Sir William, I can have at any moment that I wish it. I need never to have stood in this prison, but that it suited my convenience for the time. Read this," he continued, handing the other a slip of parchment, which he took from a secret pocket in his bosom.

"This is a safe conduct under the hand and seal of the chief secretary, at all hours and under all circumstances."

"It is. You see, therefore, your proffer of freedom to me is useless. Gold I do not deny that I want, but even the satisfaction that it would bring me I forego: it is on other terms that we must deal in the matter connected with them."

"Name them."

"First tell me what you have heard of me. You know me as Philip Regan. Speak out, Sir William," he continued; "fear nothing, but speak as you have learned to think of me."

"It is," replied the General, thus conjured; "it is as a base and bloodyminded miscreant: one to whom acts of treachery and deeds of crime are as familiar as his every day occupation to the laborious mechanic. All this and more I have heard, and I know of no reason why I should think differently.'

"This is a flattering character," replied the other, with a bitter sneer;

"what think you of discovering a family likeness in the picture you have sketched?"

"How do you mean? For God's sake speak!"

"Suppose it was your son's character you have been describing?" "Impossible!"

"It is nevertheless true, Sir William," said the other, rising and displaying his blood-stained features and his person more fully than hitherto by the light of the lantern. "I am your son-it is John Kingsland who stands before his father!"

The General recoiled with horror, and fixed his eyes upon him as if struck by the fascination of the basilisk. "You!" he exclaimed, "you my son?-No, no, it cannot be."

"It is the case, however," returned Regan with the utmost coolness and self command. "But don't be alarmed, I have no anxiety to press the relationship. My forbearance is to be purchased. A few hundreds will do it."

"You shall have it," replied the General eagerly, like a man who has suddenly been reprieved from suffering some cruel and terrible torture. "You shall have it and more -far more than you ask-if you but point out your mother and sister to me."

66 That," ," said the other quickly, but with deep emphasis, "I will never do. Let them rot in obscurity, and you pine the remainder of your days under the lash of a torturing conscience."

"Are there no means-is there nothing that will tempt you, unfortunate and misguided man that you are? why is your soul so full of this unnatural darkness and revenge?"

"There is but one way, in which you may arrive at the knowledge you desire," replied Regan, with a maliciously triumphant smile upon his lip, after a pause of some minutes, during which neither spoke. "And if I make the offer it is with no hope of your accepting it, but merely to test your sincerity."

Speak! How is it to be done?" "By your own abasement!-By acknowledging me before the world as your son, and the legal heir to

VOL. II.

your property should I outlive you."

There was silence for a few minutes, during which time the General sat with his forehead clasped in his hands, and it was evident a fierce mental struggle was working within him. At length he spoke with the air of a man who had settled in his mind the course he intended to pur

sue.

"Are there no other means?" inquired he.

"None!" replied the prisoner decisively.

"Then perish the thought!" said the General with energy, springing up and pacing rapidly over the stone floor of the dungeon. Had you been but a mistaken one, one struggling in a wrong cause from honourable motives, I might-I would have acknowledged you; but a coldblooded traitor—a systematic villain! never! I renounce and despise you; you have dragged the film from my eyes, and I defy you."

Regan, though taken by surprise at this sudden and certainly unexpected burst of indignation on the part of the man to whom he claimed kindred, still managed to retain the coolness and composure which had marked his conduct through the entire of this remarkable scene, and quietly replied, "I had little expectation of your receiving my proposal otherwise. My business with you for the present is therefore ended, and I will now take my leave."

"Whither would you go? You are a prisoner here?

"You will not deny the validity of the safeguard, I think, Sir William?"

"By heaven, I will dispute the validity of any thing to protect such a villain as you are! Back, sir, back!" exclaimed the General, standing at the door of the cell, “you force this passage at your peril." As he spoke, he drew a pistol from beneath his cloak, and presented it at Regan.

Nothing daunted, the other eyed the levelled weapon with the utmost fortitude. In the moment that the General had placed himself in an attitude of hostility, he had snatched up the heavy fetters from the floor, which had been forged out of forty

I

eight pounds' weight of iron, and formed in the hands of a powerful and excited man a desperate and deadly weapon. For a moment not a word was spoken on either side; the barrel of the pistol glanced coldly and steadily in the flickering light, and on the countenance of the old man there was but one settled expression of firm determination. Regan held the massive irons in his grasp, ready to launch them at the head of his opponent the instant he perceived the slightest variation or tremor in the muzzle of the deadly weapon which covered him.

"You wouldn't shoot your son, Sir William," exclaimed Regan with a horse-laugh. "You have surely guilt enough upon your soul already."

"You are a taunting and a desperate villain," was the reply, "and no crafty forgery shall save you. Down with your weapons instantly, or I fire.”

"Fool that you are!" returned the other, with a bitterness that he could ill controul; "the ball that's to harm me was never yet cast. Let me go free, or by the eternal G-d, you will bring that upon you had better have come from any hand than mine."

66

Advance but an inch," hissed the General through his set teeth, "make but the shadow of a movement, and you will never make another."

"Then have the fruit of your madness!" exclaimed Regan, raising himself to his full height, in order to lend more force to the blow he meditated. The weighty irons clashed and clanked together above his head, as he made a forward motion, but at

the same instant the pistol of the General sent forth its sheet of flame, and the right arm of his opponent fell useless by his side; effectively, however, as the weapon had been discharged, it did not prevent the weighty fetters from falling upon the head of Sir William, and bearing him senseless to the floor.

He

When Regan felt himself wounded, his first impulse was to remain and wreak his vengeance upon the prostrate form at his feet; his next, and the one on which he acted, was to take instant advantage of the chance that lay in his way, and escape. hastily bound his arm round with his cravat, and concealed it as much as possible under his coat, whilst he snatched the keys and traversed the long passages which led to the exte rior entrance. Here he was stopped by one of the under wardens; but the production of his pass at once satisfied all scruples, and he was permitted to proceed without further questioning.

When he had got outside, a sudden thought seemed to strike him, for he turned round like one who had forgotten something, and informed the warder that Sir William Stradford wished to speak with him in the traitor's tower, after which, muttering damnation between his teeth, as the keen night air rendered his wound rather painful, he hurried through the maze of back streets at the rear of the Castle, and at length entered the public-house which has been previously described as the residence of the Fogarties.

(To be continued.)

TIMON.

P.