"Did you hear the General speak to me?" enquired Eustace in a perturbed accent. After a long pause the stranger answered, "I did."--Those words were uttered in a well-known voice; and at a moment of indelible shame and public ruin, Eustace saw the long-desired features of his father: that father, by whose side he hoped to have fought manfully, in defence of his King and in pursuit of glorious renown, was the witness of an accusation which even mercy could not pardon, and beheld him sinking under the consciousness of acknowledged offences. Dignified in misery, Colonel Evellin stood gazing at the youth on whose virtues his fondest hopes had reposed, now sunk far below even his own desperate fortunes. Eustace held his hands before his face, not daring even to ask a blessing, nor presuming to enquire how they happened to meet at this awful crisis. Colonel Evellin first broke silence. "You are Eustace Evellin, my only son, for whom I cherished the remnant of my unfortunate life.--Boy, I was plundered of wealth, title, and reputation, by a perfidious friend. I submitted to obscurity and poverty, for I was blessed with a faithful wife in your angel-mother. Thanks be to Heaven, she lives not to see this day!--I have fought and bled for my King. I have endured hardships which would paralyze your pampered niceness to hear described. For eleven months I fed on carrion, reposed on filth, deafened with the sound of battering cannon, the shouts of besieging rebels, and the groans of dying comrades. I have swam across rivers, warding the broken ice from my wounded body. I have, like a hunted wolf, dressed those wounds in mountain-fastnesses, shunning the abode of man, and eluding pursuers whose mercy I disdained to ask. I have seen my King a prisoner, without power to redress his wrongs; my country a prey to tyrants; all her hallowed institutions overturned; but never till now, Eustace, was I completely wretched; for never did anguish, in its most desperate forebodings, whisper that I could be the parent of a traitor." "Oh, my father!" replied Eustace; "kill me with your weapon rather than your words. By the unimpeached honour of my blessed mother, I am no traitor." "Who spoke the accusation," returned the Colonel, "which I returned to hear, and to curse the hour of thy birth?--'Twas not the light reproach of petulant folly, anxious to shift the shame of defeat from its own misconduct.' The speaker was the wise, magnanimous Hopton." "But even wisdom and magnanimity may mistake." "Was there any intercourse which he interdicted, and you clandestinely continued?" "There was one who wound himself round my heart by ties which I wanted firmness to dissolve, and I greatly fear he has been a traitor to his country and me." "No expletives; no qualifying terms; no diminutive appellations, for crimes that involve a kingdom's fate. Under the influence of this man, you have been rapacious, licentious, rash, regardless of subordination." "I have."