“This was all. No name was even signed to the death warrant of all my hopes. At that moment a cold chill came over my heart, which has never left it since. That letter was the Medusa which turned it into stone. I did not rave—I did not weep. Believe me, Alfred Bernard, I was as calm at that moment as I am now. But the calmness was more terrible than open wrath. It was the sure indication of deep-rooted, deliberate revenge. I wrote a letter to my father, explaining every thing, and then saddling my horse, I turned his head towards old Howard's cottage, and rode like the lightning. “The old man was sitting in his shirt sleeves, in the porch. He saw me approach, and in his loud, hearty voice, which fell like fiendish mockery upon my ear, he cried out, 'Hallo, Arthur, my boy, come to say good-bye to your sweetheart again, hey! Well, that's right. You couldn't part like loveyers before the stranger and the old folks. Shall I call my little Molly down?” “'Old man,' I said, in a hollow, sepulchral voice, 'you have no daughter'—and throwing myself from my horse, I rushed into the house. “I will not attempt to describe the scene which followed. How the old man rushed to her room, and the truth flashed upon his mind that she had fled with her guilty lover. How he threw himself upon the bed of his lost and ruined daughter, and a stranger before to tears, now wept aloud. And how he prayed with the fervor of one who prays for the salvation of a soul, that God would strike with the lightning of his wrath the destroyer of his peace, the betrayer of his daughter's virtue. Had Edward Hansford witnessed that scene, he had been punished enough even for his guilt. “Well, he deserted the trusting girl, and she returned to her now darkened home; but, alas, how changed! When her child was born, the innocent offspring of her guilt, in the care attending its nurture, the violent grief of the mother gave way to a calm and settled melancholy. All saw that the iron had entered her soul. Her old father died, blessing and forgiving her, and with touching regard for his memory, she refused to desecrate his pure name, by permitting the child of shame to bear it. She called it after a distant relation, who never heard of the dishonour thus attached to his name. A heart so pure as was the heart of Mary Howard, could not long bear up beneath this load of shame. She lingered about five years after the birth of her boy, and on her dying bed confided the child to me. There in that sacred hour, I vowed to rear and protect the little innocent, and by God's permission I have kept that vow.” “Oh, tell me, tell me,” said Bernard, wildly, “am I that child of guilt and shame.” “Alas! Alfred, my son, you are,” said the preacher, “but oh, you know not all the terrible vengeance which a mysterious heaven will this day visit on the children of your father.” As the awful truth gradually dawned upon him, Bernard cried with deep emotion.