f an old friend of his uncle's--an officer in the same
regiment--or rather, it ought to be owned without reserve, the
acquaintance of the fair daughter of that friend. In these troubled but
precious moments it was, that Gerald's young heart first awakened to love;
and when, upon the death of his uncle Colonel Lyle, who never recovered
the wounds he had received upon the field of Naseby, old Lazarus Seaman
received the command of the regiment, it was again the bright eyes of
pretty Mistress Mildred that served as a loadstone to attach him to it,
and to attract him to follow the troop which garrisoned the lone mansion
upon the eastern coast of England; for Colonel Lazarus Seaman was the
governor or commander of this impromptu sort of fortress; and Colonel
Lazarus Seaman's daughter, his only and motherless child, quitted her
father's side as little as possible. She it was who was the tenant of the
room appertaining to that balconied window, and those bright and
carefully-tended flowers, to which the eyes of Gerald now so often
strayed, as he paced up and down the dull court, to perform the duties of
sentinel.

Gerald's thoughts, however, as already intimated, were not placid, nor
were they exclusively occupied by the object of his affections. They
dwelt, from time to time, with grief upon his uncle, whose death had
excited in him so many bitter regrets; and those sad recollections, in
their turn, called forth in him other reflections of a new and painful
nature. He recalled to mind how, in his dying moments, the self-elected
father of his youth had summoned him to his side, and talked to him of
that other father whom he had never known; how he had spoken, in broken
accents, and with much remorse, of the possible hatred engendered between
father and son; of his own regrets, now first clearly awakened in him,
that he himself might have been the cause of such a consummation; and how
then, with his last breath, he in vain endeavoured to murmur expressions
of bitter repentance for some cruel wrong done, the nature of which no
longer met the ear of the anxious listener, and was soon left for ever
unexplained in the silence of death. These sad remembrances led to a train
of thought of a most painful and harassing description. His position as a
voluntary supporter of a cause repugnant to the principles of a father,
whom, although unknown to him, it was his duty to honour and obey, and as
affianced to the daughter of a man whose Rep