completed the void in his pockets, and concluded his day's rank
experience of life. By the gray dawn he stole back to his bed, and as he
laid himself down, he thought with avid pleasure of Paris, its gay
gardens and brilliant shops and crowded streets; he thought, too, of his
father's calm confidence of success, of the triumph that already had
attended his wiles,--a confidence and a triumph which, exciting his
reverence and rousing his emulation, had decided his resolution. He
thought, too, of Lucretia with something of affection, recalled her
praises and bribes, her frequent mediation with his father, and felt that
they should have need of each other. Oh, no, he never would tell her of
the snare laid at Guy's Oak,--never, not even if incensed with his
father. An instinct told him that that offence could never be forgiven,
and that, henceforth, Lucretia's was a destiny bound up in his own. He
thought, too, of Dalibard's warning and threat. But with fear itself
came a strange excitement of pleasure,--to grapple, if necessary, he a
mere child, with such a man! His heart swelled at the thought. So at
last he fell asleep, and dreamed that he saw his mother's trunkless face
dripping gore and frowning on him,--dreamed that he heard her say: "Goest
thou to the scene of my execution only to fawn upon my murderer?" Then a
nightmare of horrors, of scaffolds and executioners and grinning mobs and
agonized faces, came on him,--dark, confused, and indistinct. And he
woke, with his hair standing on end, and beard below, in the rising sun,
the merry song of the poor canary,--trill-lill-lill, trill-trill-lill-
lill-la! Did he feel glad that his cruel hand had been stayed?



EPILOGUE TO PART THE FIRST.

It is a year since the November day on which Lucretia Clavering quitted