hat the prisoner had been taken. Gerald knew how almost certain
would be the old cavalier's condemnation under such circumstances. But
there were evidently hopes of saving him. Communications, it was clear,
had been established with the prisoner by persons outside the walls of the
fortress. It was known probably, that, by permission of the commander, the
prisoner was allowed to take the air for a certain time daily, in the
small court beneath the walls of the tower in which he was confined; and
this opportunity was watched, it would seem, for the conveyance of the
communication into the hand of the prisoner.

The conflicting struggle which had arisen in Gerald's mind, now gave place
to one overpowering feeling. He was determined at all risks, and at
whatever sacrifice to himself, to save his father. The breach of
trust--the dereliction from his honour--the probability of being obliged
to renounce the hand of the girl he loved, if detected in assisting in a
plot to favour the evasion of the old cavalier--all faded away before his
sight, and appeared as naught when compared with the hope of rescuing his
father from his cruel situation. What the nature of the scheme was which
Lord Clynton's friends seemed to be devising, in order to effect his
escape, or how far he could assist in such a project, he was unable to
divine. But the one thought was there, and mastered all--the thought that,
on opening the way of escape before his father, he should be able to say,
"Father, bless thy long-estranged son; it is he who saves thee." The rest
was doubt, confusion, and darkness.

Again and again did he turn over in his mind a thousand projects by which
to aid in the evasion of the prisoner. Again and again did he endeavour to
conjecture what might have been already purposed. All appeared to him to
be impracticable on the one hand, and a mystery on the other. Already the
consciousness of his secret induced him to look upon every one with
suspicious eyes, as an enemy or a spy upon his conduct. But most of all,
with that prejudice which pointed him out his supposed rival as the
object of peculiar hatred, did he look upon Mark Maywood as his enemy in
this matter--that Mark Maywood, whose violent party feelings, and fierce
Republican abhorrence of royalty and the adherents of the fallen royalty
of England, had already manifested themselves in such frequent outbreaks
since his arrival as a fresh recruit in the troop--that Mark Maywood, who,