nclude all family feuds. Only now did Berenger understand what his
father had said on his death-bed of flagrant injustice committed in his
days of darkness. He felt that he was reaping the reward of the injuries
committed against the Chevalier and his son on behalf of the two
unconscious children. He would willingly at once have given up all claim
to the Nid-de-Merle estate--and he was now of age; two birthdays had
passed in his captivity and brought him to years of discretion--but he
had no more power than before to dispose of what was the property of
Eustacie and her child; and the whole question of the validity of his
marriage would be given up by his yielding even the posthumous claim
that might have devolved on him in case of Eustacie's death. This would
be giving up her honour, a thing impossible.

'Alas!' he sighed, 'my poor father might well say he had bound a heavy
burthen round my neck.'

And from that time his hopes sank lower as the sense of the justice of
his cause left him. He could neither deny his religion nor his marriage,
and therefore could do nothing for his own deliverance; and he knew
himself to be suffering in the cause of a great injustice; indeed, to be
bringing suffering on the still more innocent Philip.

The once proudly indifferent youth was flagging now; was losing
appetite, flesh, and colour; was unwilling to talk or to take exercise;
and had a wan and drooping air that was most painful to watch. It seemed
as if the return of summer brought a sense of the length and weariness
of the captivity, and that the sunshine and gaiety of the landscape had
become such a contrast to the captives' deadness of spirit that they
could hardly bear to behold them, and felt the dull prison walls more
congenial to their feelings than the gaiety of the summer hay and
harvest-fields.

CHAPTER XXXVII. BEATING AGAINST THE BARS

My horse is weary of the stall, And I am sick of captive thrall.--LADY
OF THE LAKE

Letters! They were hailed like drops of water in a thirsty land. No
doubt they had been long on the way, ere they had reached the hands of
the Chevalier de Ribaumont, and it was quite possible that they had been
read and selected; but, as Berenger said, he defied any Frenchman to
imitate either Lord Walwyn's style or Sir Marmaduke's, and when late
in the autumn the packet was delivered to him, the two captives gloated
over the very outsides before they opened them.

The first intelligen