ive a repentant father's blessing,
and hear that father ask, with a contrite heart, pardon of his son and
of his God."

The parchments were brought and placed before the baronet by the
assiduous lawyer, and the son--for son to Sir Reginald he really was--
with looks of the most devout humility, and his eyes streaming with
hypocritical tears, knelt reverently down at the feet of the trembling
and disease-stricken parent. His feeble hands are outstretched over the
inclined head of the impostor, his lips part--this--this--I cannot
bear--so, before a single word falls from our common father, I rush
forward, and, kneeling down beside my assassin-brother, exclaim, in all
the agony of wretchedness and the spirit of a newly-born affection,
"Bless me, even me also, O my father!--he has taken away my birthright,
and, behold, he would take away my blessing also. Bless even me!"

"Ralph Rattlin, by all that's damnable!" screamed forth the
self-convicted impostor.

Thus, this apparently imprudent and rash step was productive to me of
more service than could have been hoped from the deepest-laid plan. In
a moment we were on our feet, and our hands on each other's throats.
This sudden act seemed miraculously to invigorate our father; he rose
from his seat, and, standing to the full height of his tall and gaunt
figure, placing his bony hand heavily on my shoulder, and looking me
fixedly in the face, said, "If thou art Ralph Rathelin, who then is
this?"

"The base-born of your paramour!" and with a sudden energy I hurled him
from me; and he lay bruised and crouching beneath the large oriel
window, at the extremity of the room.

"It was unseemly said, and cruelly done," said the baronet, sorrowfully.
"Oh, but now my sins are remembered upon me! I cast my sons loose upon
the face of the earth, and, in my dying hour, they come and struggle
together for their lives before my eyes! Verily am I punished; my crime
is visited heavily upon me."

The other parties in the room were little less affected with various
emotions. The London attorney was making rapidly for the door, when he
was met by the advancing Pigtop, who thrust him again into the
apartment, and then boldly faced the priest--the latter still in his
canonicals, the former dressed as a sectarian preacher.

Their antipathy was mutual and instantaneous. But, ere the really
reverend gentleman could begin some pious objurgation at this apparent
interference with his commu