ith one whom he has
deemed long dead. When last we met, I left him on the shores of Ireland
after the battle of the Boyne, in which I took part and he did not. The
ship in which I was supposed to have sailed was wrecked at sea, and
every soul therein perished. But I had marked this man's eagerness to
make me quit my native land, in which I had great duties to perform, and
I never went to the vessel, in which if I had gone, I should have met a
watery grave. During the time that has since passed, he has enjoyed
wealth that belonged not to him, a title to which he had no claim. He
has raised himself to power and to station, and he has abused his power
and disgraced his station, till his King is weary of him, and his
country can endure him no longer. In the meanwhile, I have waited my
time; I have watched all his movements; I have heard of all the
inquiries he has set on foot to prove my death, and all the
investigations he instituted, when he found that the boy who was with me
had been set on shore again. I have given him full scope and licence to
act as he chose; but I have come at length, to wrest from him that which
is not his, and to strip him of a rank to which he has no claim.--Have
you anything to say, Harry Sherbrooke?" he continued, fixing his eye
upon him. "Have you anything to say against that which I advance?"
While he had been speaking, the other had evidently been making a
struggle to resume his composure and command over himself, and he now
gazed upon him with a fierce and vindictive look, but without attempting
to rise.
"I will not deny, Lennard Sherbrooke," he replied, "that I know you; I
will not even deny that I know you to be Earl of Byerdale. But I know
you also to be a proclaimed traitor and outlaw, having borne arms
against the lawful sovereign of these realms, subjected by just decree
to forfeiture and attainder; and I call upon every one here present to
aid me in arresting you, and you to surrender yourself, to take your
trial according to law!" "Weak man, give over!" replied the Colonel.
"All your schemes are frustrated, all your base designs are vain. You
writhe under my heel, like a crushed adder, but, serpent, I tell you,
you bite upon a file. First, for myself, I am not a proclaimed traitor;
but, pleading the King's full pardon for everything in which I may have
offended, I claim all that is mine own, my rights, my privileges, my
long forgotten name, even to the small pittance of inheritance, which,
in your vast accessions of p