t.

"Father!" he exclaimed in smothered accents, "give me thy blessing."

"Your father! I!" cried the old cavalier; "you my son! you Gerald Clynton!
no--no--Gerald Lyle, I should have said. Tell me not so."

"I am your son Gerald--Gerald Clynton--Oh, call me by that name!"
exclaimed the kneeling young man in a choked voice; for the tears were
starting into his eyes.

"Thou art no son of mine. I know thee not! Leave me!" said Lord Clynton,
springing from his seat in bitter anger.

Go-to-bed Godlamb stirred uneasily upon his post. Gerald rose quickly
from his knees, trembling with agitation; for in spite of the violence of
his emotion, he had sufficient presence of mind to look cautiously round
at his sleeping comrade. Gideon's eyes were still closed over his book, in
that profound mystery of devotion which was one of his most remarkable
traits.

"My father!" cried Gerald imploringly to the old man, who now stood
looking towards him with a harsh and stubborn expression of countenance,
although the workings of emotion were faintly perceptible in the
lineaments of his face.

Lord Clynton waved him impatiently away, and turned aside his head.

"Oh, repulse me not, my father!" cried Gerald with imploring looks. "Why
am I still the proscribed son of your affections? What have I done, to be
thus driven from your arms? Am I still--though innocent of all wrong--to
pay so cruel a penalty for my unhappy birth?"

"Allude not to your mother!" exclaimed the old man passionately. "Defile
not her memory even by a thought, base boy! Were she living still, she
also would refuse to acknowledge her degenerate son."

"Great God! what have I done to merit this?" said the unhappy son,
forgetting, in the agitation of his mind, the strict principles of the
Puritanical party, which forbade as sinful this adjuration of the
Deity--"I thought to save you, my father, from your cruel situation--I
thought to aid your flight."

"Say rather," said the excited cavalier, giving way to his hot
unreasonable temper, "to trample on the prisoner--to scoff at him, and
triumph over him--to deliver him up to his enemies. What have I else to
expect from the degenerate rebel to the religion of his fathers, his
country, and his king. Go, boy--go, play the patriot at thy ease--reverse
the tale of the Roman Brutus--and denounce thy father to the block!"

"Unjust! unkind!" said the young man, struggling with his tears, which now
began to give place to feel