the stranger; in thy mother's house I feel but the more the orphan.
Henceforth I have devoted to thee my life! And my life my dead and
dread father hath left to thee, as a doom or a blessing; wherefore
cleave I to thy side;--cleave we in life and in death to each other!"

An undefined and cheerless thrill shot through the Earl's heart as the
youth spoke thus; and the remembrance that Haco's counsel had first
induced him to abandon his natural hardy and gallant manhood, meet
wile by wile, and thus suddenly entangle him in his own meshes, had
already mingled an inexpressible bitterness with his pity and
affection for his brother's son. But, struggling against that uneasy
sentiment, as unjust towards one to whose counsel--however sinister,
and now repented--he probably owed, at least, his safety and
deliverance, he replied gently:

"I accept thy trust and thy love, Haco! Ride with me, then; but
pardon a dull comrade, for when the soul communes with itself the lip
is silent."

"True," said Haco, "and I am no babbler. Three things are ever
silent: Thought, Destiny, and the Grave."

Each then, pursuing his own fancies, rode on fast, and side by side;
the long shadows of declining day struggling with a sky of unusual
brightness, and thrown from the dim forest trees and the distant
hillocks. Alternately through shade and through light rode they on;
the bulls gazing on them from holt and glade, and the boom of the
bittern sounding in its peculiar mournfulness of toile as it rose from
the dank pools that glistened in the western sun.