Joyce Basil held up her hand in imploration, but Reybold did not heed
the woman's remark. He felt a weight rising from his heart, and the
blindness of many months lifted from his eyes. The dying mortal upon
the bed, over whose face the blue billow of death was rolling
rapidly, and whose eyes sought in his daughter's the promise of mercy
from on high, was the mysterious parent who had never arrived--the
Judge from Fauquier. In that old man's long waxed mustache, crimped
hair, and threadbare finery the Congressman recognized Old Beau, the
outcast gamester and mendicant, and the father of Joyce and Uriel
Basil.

"Colonel Reybold," faltered that old wreck of manly beauty and of
promise long departed, "Old Beau's passing in his checks. The chant
coves will be telling to-morrow what they know of his life in the
papers, but I've dropped a cold deck on 'em these twenty years. Not
one knows Old Beau, the Bloke, to be Tom Basil, cadet at West Point in
the last generation. I've kept nothing of my own but my children's
good name. My little boy never knew me to be his father. I tried to
keep the secret from my daughter, but her affection broke down my
disguises. Thank God! the old rounder's deal has run out at last. For
his wife he'll flash her diles no more, nor be taken on the vag."

"Basil," said Reybold, "what trust do you leave to me in your family?"

Mrs. Basil strove to interpose, but the dying man raised his voice:

"Tryphonee can go home to Fauquier. She was always welcome
there--without me. I was disinherited. But here, Colonel! My last drop
of blood is in the girl. She loves you."