she
exclaimed: "My daughter! my daughter! is it thus I find you?" and sank
insensible on the sofa beside her.

Hannah Doliver sprang toward Rufus, covering him with kisses and calling
him her "dear, dear son."

The young man threw her roughly to the floor, and, alarmed by the sudden
scene of tumult and confusion, rushed into the street.

Florence clung close to the side of her father, who seemed struck dumb
with horror and amaze.

At length the sheriff approached him. "Do you wish further proofs
against the man we accuse?" he demanded.

"Take the villain away!" roared Major Howard, bursting suddenly into a
terrific ebullition of anger, "and burn him at the stake. Hanging is too
easy death for such a monster of wickedness!"

The assembly, terrified by the angry, tumultuous scene, began to
disperse.

"Pause for a brief moment, my friends," said the major, growing somewhat
calmer; "I have a few words of explanation 'tis meet you should hear.
That man," pointing to Col. Malcome, who stood in the strong grasp of
his keepers, glaring around him with the ferocity of a baffled tiger,
"is the wretch who married my sister to steal her fortune, and leave her
in poverty and distress with a young babe at her breast, to debauch
himself with her serving-woman, by whom he had also a child. There lies
the woman he has wronged," said he, his face growing fiercer, as he
pointed to the form of the supposed Mrs. Howard, cast lifelessly on the
sofa beside Edith Malcome, "at the feet of her daughter, and there
stands the vile creature," pointing a wrathful finger toward Hannah
Doliver, "who was his leman. But her bastard boy has fled the embrace of
his polluted mother. My sister returned to me, after suffering inhuman
barbarities from this monster, but he withheld her child. Her heart was
broken by misfortune, and her only wish was to pass the remainder of her
life in quiet and seclusion. My wife died when this dear girl was an
infant," said he, taking the hand of Florence in his, who stood with her
eyes fixed immovably on her father's face; "and I besought my sister to
stand in the place of a mother to my little daughter."

Florence directed a quick, troubled glance toward the form which still
lay motionless on the sofa beside Edith, but did not move.

"I have no more to say," resumed the major more calmly; "the artful
wickedness which has threatened my ruin is exposed. Officers of justice,
do your duty! Take Herbert Mervale from