s him out the hours and days he has to live.
Shrink back, ye rays! The love is disenhallowed; while the hand was on
the rose, the thought was on the charnel.

Yonder, in the opposite tower, in the small casement near the roof, came
the rays. Childhood is asleep. Moon and Starbeam, ye love the slumbers
of the child! The door opens, a dark figure steals noiselessly in. The
father comes to look on the sleep of his son. Holy tenderness, if this
be all! "Gabriel, wake!" said a low, stern voice, and a rough hand shook
the sleeper.

The sharpest test of those nerves upon which depends the mere animal
courage is to be roused suddenly, in the depth of night, by a violent
hand. The impulse of Gabriel, thus startled, was neither of timidity
nor surprise. It was that of some Spartan boy not new to danger; with a
slight cry and a fierce spring, the son's hand clutched at the father's
throat. Dalibard shook him off with an effort, and a smile, half in
approval, half in irony, played by the moonlight over his lips.

"Blood will out, young tiger," said he. "Hush, and hear me!"

"Is it you, Father?" said Gabriel. "I thought, I dreamed--"

"No matter; think, dream always that man should be prepared for defence
from peril!"

"Gabriel," and the pale scholar seated himself on the bed, "turn your
face to mine,--nearer; let the moon fall on it; lift your eyes; look
at me--so! Are you not playing false to me? Are you not Lucretia's spy,
while you are pretending to be mine? It is so; your eye betrays you.
Now, heed me; you have a mind beyond your years. Do you love best the
miserable garret in London, the hard fare and squalid dress, or
your lodgment here, the sense of luxury, the sight of splendour, the
atmosphere of wealth? You have the choice before you."

"I choose, as you would have me, then," said the boy, "the last."

"I believe you. Attend! You do not love me,--that is natural; you are
the son of Clara Varney! You have supposed that in loving Lucretia
Clavering you might vex or thwart me, you scarce knew how; and Lucretia
Clavering has gold and gifts and soft words and promises to bribe
withal. I now tell you openly my plan with regard to this girl: it is
my aim to marry her; to be master of this house and these lands. If
I succeed, you share them with me. By betraying me, word or look, to
Lucretia, you frustrate this aim; you plot against our rise and to our
ruin. Deem not that you could escape my fall; if I am driven hence,--a