“Ayliffe lifted the child with trembling arms, and pressed its cheeks to his lips. The little creature did not cry, nor appear likely to do so, but seemed the image of mute apprehension. The whole scene was so painful, that Mr Hylton was not sorry when the Governor of the gaol approached, to intimate that the interview must cease. The prisoner, exhausted with violent excitement, quietly surrendered his child to his attendant, and then silently grasped the hand of Mr Hylton, who thereupon quitted the cell; the door of which was immediately locked upon its miserable occupant: who was once again _alone_!” From the prison let us to the great Earl’s house. His lordship has become morose and almost vindictive against the supposed murderer of his son, from the very efforts that have been made to save him from the gallows. Had Adam Ayliffe been suffered to die the unpitied death of any other heinous criminal, no one, perhaps, would have more pitied the wretched malefactor than the Earl of Milverstoke himself. The interest taken in the convict, not only by the minister, but by his own daughter, and, as he suspected, by the very widow of the murdered lord, his daughter-in-law, seemed cruel forgetfulness of the dead, and wanton injury to the living. He upbraided the minister who preached the virtues of mercy and forgiveness; he looked with anger and violent impatience when others dared to take up the thread of the clergyman’s unauthorised discourse. During an interview with Lady Alkmond, the Earl had heard the syllables _forgive!_ dropping from the widow’s mouth; he made no answer, but repaired to his library, in which he walked to and fro for some time, meditating with sternness and displacency upon the word. Let us open the door gently and carefully, and, using our lawful privilege, look in.