from their lips. "Gerald!
Everard!" they exclaimed again; and Everard Clynton, flinging himself into
his brother's arms, gave way to his suppressed agitation, and burst into a
flood of tears. At this moment a distant sound of a gun came across the
water; Everard sprang up and grasped his brother's arm.

"Hush!" he said, "three shots from the sea are the signal to me that he
has escaped in safety to the vessel that awaits him."

Another boomed faintly across the broad. A pause of fearful interest
followed, and then another. Once more the brothers fell into each others'
arms.

In a few words Everard Clynton explained to his brother, how, after his
father's capture, he had enlisted in the troop quartered in the fortress,
in order to save him. How he had known from their friends without the
means provided to effect his father's escape; how he, too, had sought,
with desperation, the midnight watch upon which depended his father's
delivery; and, finding himself overcome by his supposed rival, he had
administered to him a sleeping draught in order to secure the post; how
his pretended admiration for Mistress Mildred had been assumed in order to
forward his views and colour his designs, by giving a pretext to his
desire to obtain the post of sentry in the court; how Mildred had never
given him any encouragement, Gerald's unreasonable jealousy having
supplied the rest.

He had assisted his father to escape, and only long after his flight had
given the alarm, and fired upon the water, pretending to call for a sudden
pursuit.

Mark Maywood, however, was tried by a court-martial for negligence upon
duty on the night of the prisoner's escape; but the constantly exhibited
violence of the Republican principles which he had affected, as well as
his zeal and exemplary good conduct since he had joined the troop, saved
him in the colonel's eyes. He was acquitted. Shortly afterwards he
disappeared altogether from the fortress, after an affectionate farewell
to Gerald Clynton, who had the good fortune to receive, in due time, the
assurance of his brother's safe escape to join his father in Flanders.

Not long afterwards, the death of Colonel Lazarus Seaman leaving his
daughter an orphan, Gerald Clynton married pretty little Mistress Mildred,
and, quitting the service, retired to Lyle-Court, the estate bequeathed to
him by his uncle.

There is no doubt that pretty little Mistress Mildred's eyes were given to
be coquettish in spite of