"My poor, dear Frank, to think you were alive and well, or at least alive, while I was breaking my heart over your death! And the money I wasted in mourning! Not that I grudge it, now you are safe and sound. And Graves spoke so beautifully of you in his sermon, so much more hopeful you were in heaven than one expected from him, that I cried like a child in church! And all the time you were in the hands of tormentors! And of all men in the world, that addle-pated Canon Fell must be here, when you came, seeking a friend in need! Never again does the man cross the threshold of my house. And you were thrust into a vile prison among thieves and murderers. Well, we must be thankful you didn't die of gaol-fever. 'Reckon every misery you miss as a mercy,' Graves often says; but you have missed few, I am sure. How I want to see the dear, good man who delivered you! And now, they tell me, he is likely to come to want; truly the ways of Providence are strange, and not all the sermons in the world will convince me they are not. And Lord Sheffield had a hand in the mangling of your dear face. I shall never believe in man again. But, Frank, how did you escape? I had clean forgotten in the joy of seeing you. How have you got out of Castle Mulgrave? Perhaps they are pursuing you, while I am gabbling like the foolish old woman I am." "Not so, auntie. The young earl set me free this morning." "God bless him! This morning, did you say? And now it is near supper-time. You must be starving." The kind soul did not stay to listen to my protestations, but flew to her kitchen to hasten supper. Over that meal, which we had by our two selves, the vicar being away at a meeting of clergymen, my aunt told me the contents of a letter which she had received from my father, or part of the contents. The letter she did not show me. He wrote from Amsterdam, whence he purposed to go to Venice and the East, saying that a Dutch gentleman, with whom he had made acquaintance, and who had done him service with the Stadtholder, turned out to be Doctor Goel, and the doctor had informed him I was still alive, and of all he knew concerning my affairs, which did not go further than that I was in hiding. My father took shame to himself for having been so easily deceived as to my death, and wrote remorsefully of my mischance and suffering, and bade my aunt convey to me his forgiveness. I thought his letter somewhat less than fatherly, even in my aunt's account, but I said nothing. She read my silence. "Bear in mind, Frank, that your father has been hurt in the tenderest part of him--his pride. All his life he has been looked up to as the chief man in the Isle, barring the nobility, and he was confident of carrying all before him against Vermuijden and the King himself. And he has utterly failed. To such a man as he is, that is tenfold more bitter than death. Doubtless, he thinks he would have won the day, if you had fallen in with his plans."