"I will publish all that I know,—I will declare our compact." "And what will that avail, insolent ?-expect you to be credited before me?—I have made my election, Neville;-I am willing to make restitution,-but not to sacrifice my character;-that I will preserve at all ha zards." "Sir Amias de Crosby, I have done," replied Neville firmly ;-"I have fulfilled a vow that I made when ill of the plague ;and since I cannot awaken you to contrition, I will bring you to punishment." "I have told you," said Sir Amias, in some degree awed by the sternness of the penitent, "that I do repent of what I have done;-that I am willing to give all back which I have wrongfully, as I confess, acquired; but let there be some show of reason for so doing." Neville shook his head as he answered"There is no contrition, Sir Amias, in all that ;-you are but afraid of being discovered, and you shall be discovered." "Do your worst then,-I have chosen my ground." "You have slandered your brother's widow, and bastardized his son." "Let them prove the contrary." "His son cannot, he is dead-murdered, as you have confessed, by your causing ;—but the lady "I will hear no more." "But you shall, Sir Amias." "Insolent,-quit the house,-do your worst." “I have done ;-I have but to tell you, that I was a witness to her marriage ;-and that I have here in this casket proofs and documents under your brother's own hand that she was his wife;-I got them for the guilty purpose of making you my slave ;-I have preserved them for avenging justice." With these words Hubert Neville immediately retired. CHAPTER VII. A LOVE SCENE. Love, like its emblem fire, begets itself, Points to the heavenly source from whence it came. away; THE reader needs not to be told, that the alarm of Rothelan's murder had arisen from the manner in which he was carried but it is fit now, that we should combine together those circumstances which, though in themselves of small amount, are yet essential to the development of our story. It would appear then, that in the morning when Rothelan looked out from the window of the chamber in which he was confined, he discovered he was in Windsor Castle, and in one of those towers which, northward, overlook the river. He therefore concluded that he had been seized for his old unpardoned offence, of having been taken in the ranks of the enemy; but he could not very well account to himself for the circumstance of having been brought to a palace instead of being committed to a common prison. The cause, however, of his wonder is one of those remarkable incidents which arose after the pestilence. The Earl of Lincoln's servants knew the apprehensions which their master entertained of Rothelan's pretensions. to the Lady Blanche, and having accidentally discovered that he had survived the calamity, concerted among themselves to place him in confinement until the projected marriage between the Lord Suffolk and their young lady was completed. They were doubtless the more emboldened to this adventure, by the state in which the country was left by the pestilence. "All things," says our Chronicler," were then found in confusion; many poor lackwits had made themselves great possessions with the ownerless riches of those who had perished. Troops of dissolute creatures went rioting and carousing from house to house. Revenge and Hatred had a carnival, and honest men were missed that died not of the plague, but by the knife of the irresponsible assassin. Some thought the angel of the second vial more awful than he that went be fore; and there was a fear in sad minds as if chaos were come again, and the elements of society so sundered as to be never more conjoined. Thus it was, that those men of the Earl of Lincoln's hall, dreadless of justice, carried their prisoner to Windsor; and with certain of their cup-fellows in the king's household, woful proof of the universal law. lessness! laid him fast in the royal castle, even while the king, with the remnants of the court, was there deploring the desolation |