"It's hard work to tell you to go, Clairy dear, but you mustn't stay here. Say one kind word to me, though, my dear; I haven't had much to do with kindness since I left home. I'm sorry I disgraced you all so. Ask the old man to forgive me, and tell him I should like to shake hands with him once, just once, before it's all over." "Fred, my dear brother," whispered Claire, pressing his hand to her breast, while Morton held the other. "Ah!" sighed the wounded man, "that's better. Morton, lad, it will soon be over, and people forget these things in a few days. I'm only in the way. I always have been. You'll get on better when I'm gone." "Hush, Fred!" He turned his head to Claire, who was gazing at him with burning eyes that seemed drained of the last tears. "You always were a good, true girl to me, Clairy," he whispered faintly, "and I want you to think well of me when I'm gone. I did this horrid thing, but I swear I have no recollection of it, and I never reaped a shilling advantage from the theft." The same feeling animated father and son in this time of peril--the desire to stand well in the eyes of Claire, who seemed to them as the whole world. "Think the best you can of me, my little girl," he whispered. "It will soon be over, and--there's one comfort--I shall die as a soldier should--do you hear, Morton? No hangman's rope to disgrace us more. I fell under fire, my lad, and I shall laugh at the judges, and prison, and scaffold and all." "Hush! for heaven's sake, Fred!" cried Morton. "Yes, I will. It's too much--to talk. I was in a rage with them for shooting me. It was that bully--Bray; but I forgive him, for it saves us all from trouble and disgrace. Morton, lad, don't stop in the regiment. Exchange--do you hear? Exchange, and get them away--Claire and May and the old man--to somewhere else when I'm dead." "Fred! Brother!" wailed Claire. He smiled at her, and tried to raise her hand to his cheek. "Yes, little girl!" he said tenderly. "It's quite right. Cuts the knot--the hangman's knot." There was a bitter, decisive tone in these last words, but he changed his manner again directly, and spoke gently and tenderly. "It is no use to hide it, dear sis," he said. "I can't live above a day or two. I know I shall not, and you see it is for the best. It saves the old man, and much of the disgrace to you two. Poor old fellow! I never understood him, Clairy, as I should. Under all that sham and fashionable show he tried hard for us. God bless him! he's a hero." "Fred, Fred, you are breaking my heart," wailed Claire.