It was with feelings of considerable anxiety that the Protector waited the return of Colonel Jones from the second task assigned him in the Isle of Shepey.

The routing out of a band of lawless smugglers, although commanded by so daring a skipper as Hugh Dalton, was to him a matter of little consideration, compared to the restoration of Zillah Ben Israel, and the positive saving of Constantia Cecil from worse than death: these two motives weighed deeply upon Cromwell's mind, and he would have made any sacrifice to have been assured that his purpose, with regard to both, might be effected before the morning's dawn. When the explosion of the Fire-fly disturbed his solitude in the purple chamber at Cecil Place, he directed immediate inquiry to be instituted as to its origin, and quickly ascertained that it was caused by the destruction of some ship at sea; his suspicions were at once directed to the vessel of the Buccaneer.

There was no time to lose; Colonel Jones, whose courage and coolness were proverbial amongst soldiers more celebrated for these qualities than even British soldiers have ever been before or since, was instantly dispatched to the Gull's Nest. At first the command of the Protector was to "mount silently;" but his pledge to Robin Hays was remembered, and, at the very moment when the glare of the burning ship was illumining the island, he could not bring himself to determine that the little deformed being, with whom he had held commune, had betrayed the confidence reposed in him.

"Let him know who are coming and prepare for it," thought Cromwell, whose caution was really subservient to his enthusiasm, powerful as was at all times this latter quality; and then he gave, in a low, but earnest and energetic tone, the order, "Sound a brief 'to horse!' trust in the Lord, and see that your swords be loose in their scabbards."

The troop, on its return, was met by Cromwell himself at the gate to which we have so frequently alluded. His anxiety had not been often greater than on that occasion, and it was manifested by an impatience of manner that almost terrified the attendants who waited in his presence. He was accompanied by only two officers, and his first question was if "Colonel Jones had secured Dalton and the Jewess?" A reply in the affirmative evidently afforded him great relief and satisfaction; but the feeling was quickly succeeded by one of extreme anger when informed of the total destruction of the Fire-fly, which he had desired to preserve for his own special purpose. Yet, until the prisoners had been conducted into Cecil Place by the private entrance, as he had previously arranged, his displeasure only found vent in occasional exclamations. The house was alive with alarm and curiosity, but its inmates received little information to quiet or to satisfy their eager thirst for intelligence. As the soldiers passed the gates, lights floated through the dwelling, and the windows were crowded with inquisitive countenances; great, therefore, was the disappointment when they observed the party separate, and one portion of it take a private path, leading to the Protector's apartments, while the other proceeded round an angle of the building to the stables. Many of the domestics met them at the stable gates, but could learn nothing from those trusty soldiers, who perfectly understood, and invariably acted upon, their master's favourite motto, "safety in silence;"—still they could not rest, no one went to bed, for all were in expectation of—they knew not what.

The clock struck one; about five minutes afterwards Cromwell had closed the door of his chamber; the half-hour chimed. Constance was looking on her father, sleeping calmly in his chair, in a closet that opened into his favourite library. He had not been in bed for several nights, and, since his afflicting insanity, could seldom be prevailed on to enter his own room. After pausing a few minutes, while her lips appeared to move with the prayer her heart so fervently formed, she undid the bolt, quietly opened the door, then partially closed it, and left her wretched parent alone with his physician.

She could hear within the library, in which she now stood, the heavy breathings of the afflicted man. A large lamp was burning on the massive oak-table: it shed a cheerful light, but it was a light too cheerful for her troubled and feverish spirit—she sank upon a huge carved chair, and passed her small hand twice or thrice over her brow, where heavy drops had gathered; then drew towards her the large Bible that had been her mother's. On the first page, in the hand-writing of that beloved mother, was registered the day of her marriage, and underneath the births of her several children, with a short and thanksgiving prayer affixed to each; a little lower down came a mournful register, the dates and manner of her sons' deaths; but the Christian spirit that had taught her words and prayers of gratitude, had been with her in the time of trouble; the passages were penned in true humility and humble-mindedness, though the blisterings of many tears remained upon the paper.

Constantia turned over the leaves more carelessly than was her custom; but her eye dwelt upon one of the beautiful promises, given with so much natural poetry by the great Psalmist,—"I have been young, and now am old, yet saw I never the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." "Alas!" she thought, "I can derive only half consolation from such as this. One of my parents was indeed righteous; but, alas! what has the other been?" She bowed her head upon the book, and did not again raise it, until a soft hand touched her shoulder, and a light voice whispered "Constance!"

It was Lady Frances Cromwell.

"My dear Constantia! here's a situation! I never knew any thing so provoking, so tantalising! My father, they say, has taken as many as twenty prisoners, of one sort or another; and has caged them up in that purple-room with himself, examining into and searching out every secret—secrets I want so much to know. He has got the Buccaneer, they say."

"Who says so?" inquired Constance eagerly.

"Why, everybody. Maud says so. And I have been to the door at least ten times; but even the key-hole, I verily believe, is plugged. I am sure it is, for I tried hard to see through it."

"The crisis of my fate is indeed come," murmured Constantia. Then, after a pause, she was about to address her friend: "My dear Lady Frances—"

"Don't Lady Frances me," interrupted the young maiden, pettishly. "I hate to be Lady Frances. I should know more about every thing if I were a chamberlain's daughter."

"Your father can discover nought to your prejudice. I confess I both dread and hope to hear news of the Gull's Nest. There is nothing which can affect you there."

"How can I tell? Poor Rich chooses queer postmen sometimes! And that Manasseh Ben Israel! he is as anxious as myself to know what is going on. Two rooms locked up! Constance, I wonder you have not more spirit than to submit to such proceedings. I would not."

"I am sorry for it; because it shows that your confidence in your father is overbalanced by your curiosity."

"Pshaw!" exclaimed the lady, turning from her friend, just in time to see the doors at the bottom of the room thrown open with much ceremony:—the Protector, attended by his pages, followed by Dalton, Fleetword, and Robin, entered.

Constance rose respectfully from her seat, glanced upon the form of the fearful Buccaneer who now stood before her, and laying her hand on the arm of her friend, would have withdrawn, had not Cromwell commanded her to stay.

"Mistress Cecil, you will remain;—both remain," he said, while an expression of exceeding kindness lent to his harsh countenance the effect that sunlight gives to a rugged landscape, softening without destroying a single point of its peculiar and stern character. "I have no dread of objection on the part of the Lady Frances, and I must request your presence." He took a large chair at the head of the table, and seating himself, delivered a slip of writing to his page, who immediately quitted the room.

"Our young friend will pardon this intrusion upon her privacy, and moreover allow us to continue an investigation that has already been attended with much pain, but we should hope with some satisfaction also."

As he spoke, the door again opened, and Manasseh Ben Israel, pale and trembling with agitation, walked, or rather, so submissive was his attitude, crept forward, saluting the Protector and the ladies as he advanced.

"Will your Highness permit?" inquired Constantia, rising from her own seat, and pushing it towards the Rabbi.

"Most certainly," was Cromwell's prompt reply; "our friend is aged, but he is welcome; and we have news that will gladden his heart." In an instant all trace of the servility which custom had imposed upon the manners of the children of Israel vanished. The Rabbi stood upright, and clasping his hands together, exclaimed, "My child! my child!"

"The lost sheep is found—blessed be the Lord!—safe here, within this house—and I lay my commands upon her father that she be received as a stray lamb from the fold, and warmed within his bosom. We have all children, good Rabbi; and the Lord judge between us and them, they are stiffnecked and stubborn! All, more or less, all—except one or two who shine forth as bright examples;—such is my own Elizabeth, and such also is Mistress Constantia here."

"She is found!" repeated the Jew; "but they talked of crime—of her having—I cannot speak it, please your Highness, but you know what I would say. Peradventure gold might be made to atone."

"Peace, good friend!" interrupted Oliver sternly; "justice must have its due; and, by God's blessing, while we are Protector, all the gold your tribe is worth shall not turn the scale! We would be merciful for mercy's sake; but for justice—Yet pardon me," he added in compassion to the Rabbi's horror, "I would not trifle with a father's feelings—she is guiltless of murder."

He struck the table with the butt-end of his pistol—a private door of the library opened as of itself—not one, but two females stood beneath its shadow, each supporting each, as if the one weak creature thought she could lend a portion of much needed strength to the other. Lady Frances and Constantia sprang from their seats—all distinction of rank was forgotten, and Mistress Cecil wept over her affectionate bower-maiden, as an elder over a younger sister, or even as a mother over a beloved child. She asked no questions, but kissed her brow and wept; while Barbara stood curtseying, and smiling, and crying, and glancing with evident satisfaction, amid her tears, towards her father and Robin, as if she would have said, "See how my lady, my grand lady, loves me!"

It did not escape the observation of Lady Frances that Barbara wore the chain she had given her, and she most heartily wished her father at Whitehall, or elsewhere, that she might have an opportunity of asking all the questions at once suggested by her busy brain.

It is impossible to convey an adequate idea of the meeting between the Jew and his daughter. It was with feelings of terror, more than of affection, that Zillah prepared to encounter a justly offended parent. She had heard and believed that crime such as hers—marrying or intriguing with Christians—was punished by a lingering and cruel death; and scarcely could the word of Cromwell, pledged twice for her safety, convince her that such would not be her fate. She instantly prostrated herself at the Rabbi's feet; and it would seem that, assured of his daughter's life—assured of her safety under laws—British laws—his eastern notions with regard to the submission due from woman to her master, man, returned to him in full force; for he suffered her to remain, her forehead resting on the ground, and her hands clasped around it, although he was so deeply agitated that he clung to a pedestal for support.

The Protector arose from his seat, and, advancing, kindly and tenderly raised the poor victim of confiding but too violent passion, and placed her leaning on her father's shoulder.

"Manasseh!" he said, "at times our speech is obscure, and men see through it darkly. We hope it will not be so now. Your daughter is no harlot, but a wedded woman who will soon become a mother, and, in virtue of her husband and her child, is a subject of our own. We regret the violence of which she has been guilty, but Satan is ever busy in his work of temptation. If you cast her from you, we take her to ourselves; as our blessed Lord would have received the prodigal—the sinful, but repentant son—even so will we receive her. Poor prodigal," he added, after waiting for a reply from the Rabbi, which came not, for the feelings of the tribe were struggling with those of the father—"Poor prodigal! we will not desert thee in thy hour of trial—but seek to preserve thee from worse crimes than even those of which thou hast been guilty."

Although Cromwell had placed Zillah resting on the shoulder of her father, he made no effort to support or keep her there, and the Protector was in the act of leading her towards his daughter, when Ben Israel raised a great cry, for the father had triumphed over the Jew, and snatching her to his bosom, he burst into a fervent but almost inaudible prayer of thanksgiving and gratitude, that entered the hearts of those who heard it, and witnessed the terrible strength of his emotions. The Lady Constance was suffering from various causes; the nature of which, from past events, may be more easily imagined than described. Nor were those sufferings either terminated or relieved, when, on Cromwell's striking the table again in the same manner as before, Sir Willmott Burrell stood in the apartment.

His entrance caused a sensation of astonishment and confusion through the whole group. Constantia Cecil unconsciously moved her seat nearer to that of the Protector. An expression of satisfaction crossed the anxious and feverish brow of Robin Hays. Dalton folded his arms across his bosom, and advanced his right foot, as if strengthening his position. Preacher Fleetword, who had hitherto leaned against a high-backed chair, his eyes glaring from their sockets on the countenance of "the Lord's anointed," and drinking in, with open ear and mouth, every word he uttered—now shrank into the farthest portion of the room, skilfully keeping a chair in the direction of Burrell, as a sort of fortification against violence or evil, while he muttered sentences of no gentle or complimentary nature, which, but for the august presence in which he stood, would have burst forth in anathemas against the "wolf in sheep's clothing," by which title he never failed in after years to designate the traitor. The Jew trembled, and partly rose from his seat; while Zillah, whose love had turned to hate—whose affection had become as wormwood—stood erect as he advanced, with a pale but firm look. Prepared to assert her rights to the last, she was the very model of a determined woman, who, having been greatly wronged, resolves to be greatly avenged. If her lip quivered, it was evidently from eagerness, not from indecision; and her eye had the lightning of hell, not of heaven, in its glance. Barbara crouched at the feet of her mistress; and Lady Frances, to whom something new was synonymous with something delightful, was tip-toe with expectation. She believed, from what her father had hinted, that Constantia was free, and might wed whom she pleased: this imparted an hilarity to her countenance and manner, totally different from the aspect of all others within that room. Burrell himself looked like a bull turned into the arena, from whence there is no escape. His deep-set eyes were grown red and dry: but they rested, for a moment, while he saluted Constance and Lady Frances; their next movement showed him Zillah and her father, and he shrank within himself, and quailed beneath the defying gaze of the woman he had so deeply injured. For an instant, and but for an instant, eye met eye, and glance encountered glance: the Master of Burrell was overthrown, and looked round for some relief; but like other sinners, when the hour of retribution comes, he found none; for those he next saw were Dalton, Fleetword, and Robin Hays.

"We have more than circumstantial evidence to show now, Sir Willmott Burrell," exclaimed the Protector, after surveying him with a look of terrible contempt: "what say you to this lady? Is she, too, a counterfeit?"

Burrell remained silent; and while Cromwell paused, as if expecting an answer, the Preacher could no longer hold silence, but vociferated from behind his intrenchment:—

"Under favour of the Greatness before whom I speak—under the shadow of his wing—I proclaim thee to be a sinner—even as those who stoned the holy Stephen, when he was about the Lord's bidding—even as those——"

"Peace!" exclaimed Cromwell, in a voice that sounded like thunder in the Preacher's ear. "Sir Willmott Burrell, there are now sufficient proofs—what have you to say why this lady be not declared your lawful and wedded wife?"

"I desire it not! I desire it not!" murmured the Rabbi: "my wealth he shall not have, nor my child."

"But I desire it—I demand it!" interrupted Zillah; "not for my own sake, most gracious judge," and she bent her knee to the Protector; "for never will I commune with my destroyer after this hour—but for the sake of an unborn babe, who shall not blush for its parent, when this poor head and this breaking heart have found the quiet of the grave!"

"May it please your Highness," replied Burrell, "the marriage in a foreign land is nought, particularly when solemnised between a Christian and a Jew, unless ratified here; and I will submit to that ratification, if the Lady Constantia Cecil, whom I was about to wed, and whom the person your Highness designs for my wife sought to assassinate, will agree to it,—taking on herself the penalty to which her breach of contract must of necessity lead."

All eyes were now turned to Constantia, who sat labouring for breath, and struggling with an agony to which it almost seemed her life would yield.

"We have ourselves provided for the Lady Constantia a fitting mate, good Master of Burrell," replied the Protector; "think ye that the fairest of our land are to be thrown to the dogs?" Again he struck his pistol upon the oak table, and after a breathless silence, during which Burrell never removed his eyes from Constantia—(Lady Frances afterwards said she noted they had all the evil expression of those of the hooded snake, when preparing to dart upon its prey)—the villain contrived to move more closely towards his victim, whose misery was but faintly painted on her blanched cheek.

"A little time," she murmured; "a little time to deliberate."

"Not a moment—not a moment," he replied; "and remember——"

The words had hardly passed from between his closed lips, when Walter de Guerre was ushered in, and Burrell's brow flushed one deep hue of crimson. A murmur of congratulation escaped from several of the party; the Protector turned towards Constantia with the look and manner of one who has planned what he believes will be a joyful surprise—to be gratefully received and appreciated as such; instead of beholding her face beaming with love and hope, he saw that every fibre of her frame became rigid; and she endeavoured to bury her face in her hands.

"Mistress Cecil seems to approve our choice no better than her father's," he said, after a pause of intense anxiety to all present: "We would have taught this youth what is due to ourself and our Commonwealth, by the gentlest means within our power. Methinks, women are all alike."

"Father! she is dying!" exclaimed the easily-alarmed Lady Frances.

"One moment, and I shall be well," said Constantia: and then she added,

"Sir Willmott Burrell, you pant for vengeance, and now you may have it. Believing that lady, in the sight of God, to be your wife, I cannot wrong her; though I would have sacrificed myself to—to—." She was prevented from finishing her sentence by the Protector's exclaiming with the energy and warmth of his natural character,

"We knew it; and now let me present your bridegroom. Frances, it was excess of joy that caused this agitation."

Constantia interrupted him.

"Not so, your Highness. Alas! God knows, not so. But while I say that the evil contract shall never be fulfilled—though I will never become the wife of Sir Willmott Burrell, I also say that the wife of Walter de Guerre I can never be. Nay more, and I speak patiently, calmly—rather would I lay my breaking heart, ere it is all broken, beneath the waves that lash our shore, than let one solitary word escape me, which might lead you to imagine that even the commands of your Highness could mould my dreadful destiny to any other shape."

There was no mistaking the expression of the Protector's countenance; it was that of severe displeasure; for he could ill brook, at any period, to have his wishes opposed and his designs thwarted. While Constance was rising from her seat, Sir Willmott Burrell grasped her arm with fiendish violence, and extending his other hand towards the door leading to the closet, where she had left her sleeping father, he exclaimed:

"Then I accuse openly, in the face of the Protector and this company, Robert Cecil, who stands there, of the murder of his brother Herbert, and of the murder of Sir Herbert Cecil's son; and I assert that Hugh Dalton was accessory to the same!"

A shriek so wild and piercing issued from Constantia's lips that it rang over the house and terrified all its inmates, who crowded to the portal, the boundary of which they dared not pass.

It was little to be wondered that she did shriek. Turning toward the spot at which the villain pointed, the Protector saw the half-demented Baronet standing in the door-way. He had opened the closet, and come forth during the momentary absence of his attendant, and now stood moping and bowing to the assembly in a way that would have moved the pity of a heart of stone.

"Fiend!" shouted the Protector, grasping in his great anger the throat of Sir Willmott, and shaking him as he had been a reed—"'tis a false lie! He is no murderer; and if he had been, is it before his daughter that ye would speak it! Hah! I see it all now. Such is the threat—the lie—that gave you power over this excellence." He threw the ruffian from him with a perfect majesty of resentment. Gross as was the deed, the Protector condescending to throttle such as Burrell, the manner of the act was great: it was that of an avenging angel, not of an angry or impetuous man.

Sir Willmott regained his self-possession, although with feelings of wounded pride and indignation; fixing his eye upon Constantia with, if possible, increasing malignity, he spoke:—

"His Highness much honours his subject; but Mistress Cecil herself knows that what I have spoken is true—so does her father—and so does also this man! Is it not true, I ask?"

"No! I say it is false—false as hell!" answered the Buccaneer; "and if his Highness permits, I will explain."

"You say—what?" inquired Constantia, her whole countenance and figure dilating with that hope which had so long been a stranger to her bosom.

"I say that Robert Cecil is no murderer! Stand forth, Walter Cecil, and state that within the two last years, you saw your father in a Spanish monastery; and that——"

"Who is Walter Cecil?" inquired Burrell, struggling as a drowning man, while losing his last hope of salvation.

"I am Walter Cecil!" exclaimed our old acquaintance Walter; "my nom de guerre is no longer necessary."

"It needed not that one should come from the dead to tell us that," said the Protector, impatiently; "but there are former passages we would have explained. What means the villain by his charge? Speak, Dalton, and unravel us this mystery."

"It is well known to your Highness, that few loved the former powers more than Sir Herbert Cecil; and truth to say, he was wild, and daring, and bad——"

"Dalton!" exclaimed the young man, in an upbraiding tone.

"Well, young master, I will say no more about it. Gold is a great tempter, as your Highness knows; and it tempted yonder gentleman, with whom God has dealt. He is a different sight to look upon now, to what he was the morning he sought me to commit a crime, which, well for my own sake, and the sake of others, I did not commit. He came to me——"

"Mercy! mercy! I claim your Highness' mercy!" said Constantia, falling on her knees, and holding her hands, clasped and trembling, above her head. "It is not meet that the child hear thus publicly of her father's sin! The old man, your Highness, has not power to speak!"

"Lady," continued Dalton, "he could not deny—But my tale will soon be finished, and it will take a load off your heart, and off the hearts of others. Sir Herbert did not die. I conveyed him to another land; but the papers—the instructions I had received, remained in my possession. Sir Herbert's wild character—his fondness for sea-excursions—his careless life, led to the belief that he had perished in some freak, in which he too often indulged. His brother apparently mourned and sorrowed; but, in time, the dynasty of England changed, exactly as he would have wished it—the Commonwealth soon gave the missing brother's lands to the man who was its friend, who had fought and laboured in its cause, and seemed to forget that any one else had any right to the possessions:—but the son of the injured remained as a plague-spot to his sight. I had but too good reason to know how this son of this elder brother was regarded, and I had learned to love the lad: he was ever about the beach, and fond of me, poor fellow! because I used to bring him little gifts from foreign parts—by way, I suppose, of a private atonement for grievous wrong. I took upon myself the removing of that boy to save him from a worse fate, for I loved him as my own child; and there he stands, and can say whether my plain speech be true or false. I was myself a father but a little while before I spirited him away from a dangerous home to a safe ship. Sir Robert believed they were both dead, and sorrowed not; although he compassed only the removal of the brother, yet the going away of his nephew made his possessions the more secure; for, as he said, times might change, and the boy be restored if he had lived. His disappearance made a great stir at the time; yet there were many went from the land then and were seen no more. I thought to rear him in my own line, but he never took kindly to it, so I just let him have his fling amongst people of his own thinking—gentry, and the like—who knew how to train him better than I did. I kept Sir Herbert safe enough until the act came out which gave Sir Robert right and dominion over his brother's land, declaring the other to have been a malignant, and so forth;—but the spirit was subdued within the banished man; he was bowed and broken, and cared nothing for liberty, but took entirely to religion, and became a monk; and his son, there, has seen him many a time; and it comforted me to find that he died in the belief that God would turn all things right again, and that his child would yet be master of Cecil Place. He died like a good Christian, forgiving his enemies, and saying that adversity had brought his soul to God—more fond of blaming himself than others. As to Walter, he had a desire to visit this country, and, to own the truth, I knew that if Sir Robert failed to procure the pardon I wanted, the resurrection of this youth would be an argument he could not withstand.

"Perhaps I was wrong in the means I adopted; but I longed for an honest name, and it occurred to me that Sir Robert Cecil could be frightened, if not persuaded, into procuring my pardon. God is my judge that I was weary of my reckless habits, and panted for active but legal employment. A blasted oak will tumble to the earth, if struck by a thunderbolt,—like a withy. Then my child! I knew that Lady Cecil cared for her, though, good lady, she little thought, when she first saw the poor baby, that it was the child of a Buccaneer. She believed it the offspring of a pains-taking trader, who had served her husband. She guessed the truth in part afterwards, but had both piety and pity in her bosom, and did not make the daughter suffer for the father's sin. I loved the girl!—But your Highness is yourself a father, and would not like to feel ashamed to look your own child in the face. I threatened Sir Robert to make known all—and expose these documents——"

The Skipper drew from his vest the same bundle of papers which he had used in that room, almost on that very spot, to terrify the stricken Baronet, a few months before. Sir Robert Cecil had remained totally unconscious of the explanations that had been made, and seemed neither to know of, nor to heed, the presence of Dalton, nor the important communication he had given—his eyes wandering from countenance to countenance of the assembled group,—a weak, foolish smile resting perpetually on his lip; yet the instant he caught a glimpse of the packet the Buccaneer held in his hand, his memory returned: he staggered from his daughter—who, after her appeal to Cromwell, clung to her father's side, as if heroically resolved to share his disgrace to the last—and grasped at the papers.

"What need of keeping them?" said the Protector, much affected at the scene: "give them to him, give them to him."

Dalton obeyed, and Sir Robert clutched them with the avidity of a maniac: he stared at them, enwreathed as they were by his thin, emaciated fingers, and then, bursting into a mad fit of exulting laughter, fell prostrate on the floor, before any one had sufficiently recovered from the astonishment his renewed strength had occasioned, to afford him any assistance. He was immediately raised by Constantia and his attendants, and conveyed to his own apartment, still holding fast the papers, though he gave little other sign of life. There was another, besides his daughter, who followed the stricken man—his nephew Walter.

"It is ill talking of marriage," said Cromwell, as the young man paused, and requested permission to leave the room,—"It is ill talking of marriage when Death stands at the threshold; but I have little doubt you will be able to obtain the hand which I could not dispose of. When I first saw you, I expected to see a different person—a director of spies—a chief of discord—a master, not a servant. Walter Cecil, although a bold Cavalier, would hardly have had power to draw me to the Isle of Shepey, had he not, on board the Fire-fly, chosen to embrown his face, and carry black ringlets over his own; a trick, perchance, to set the Protector on a wrong scent. Never hang y'er head at it, young man—such things have been from the beginning, and will be to the end. Methinks that old oaks stand friends with the party;—but I quarrel not with the tree—if it shielded the worthless Charles at Worcester, it revealed the true Walter at Queenborough. Yet I thank God on every account that I was led to believe you one whose blood I would fain not shed, but would rather protect—if that he has the wisdom not to trouble our country. I thank God that I was brought here to unravel and wind up. A ruler should be indeed a mortal (we speak it humbly) omnipresent! As to yonder man—devil I should rather call him—he has, I suppose, no farther threats or terrors to win a lady's love. Sir Willmott Burrell, we will at least have the ceremony of your marriage repeated without delay:—here is my friend's daughter—this night—."

"Not to-night," interrupted Zillah; "to-morrow, and not to-night; I can bear no more to-night."

"Sir Willmott Burrell," said Dalton, walking to where he stood, beaten down and trampled, yet full of poison as an adder's tooth, "be it known that I pity you:—your dagger has been turned into your own heart!—The human flesh you bribed me to destroy, lives! What message brought Jeromio from the ocean?"

Dalton was proceeding in a strain that would have quickly goaded Burrell to some desperate act; for, as the Buccaneer went on, he was lashing his passion with a repetition of the injuries and baseness of his adversary, as a lion lashes himself with his tail to stimulate his bravery; but the Protector demanded if Hugh Dalton knew before whom he stood, and dared to brawl in such presence. Silenced, but not subdued, he retreated, and contented himself with secret execrations on his enemy.

"We have rendered some justice to-night," said Cromwell, after striding once or twice the length of the apartment. "Yet is our task not finished, although the morning watch is come. Without there! Desire Colonel Jones that he remove Sir Willmott Burrell to the apartment he before occupied. The morning sun shall witness the completion of the ceremony between him and her he has so deeply wronged. We will then consider the course that justice may point out to us. Dalton, you are a free man, free to come and free to go, and to go as soon and where you please. Observe, I said as soon." Dalton bowed lowly, and moved to raise his daughter from the spot on which she had crouched by the seat of her beloved mistress; Robin instinctively moved also.

"Stay!" continued the Protector, "there is yet more to do. Young man, you must be well aware your act of this night demands some punishment. The ship which you destroyed—." Dalton writhed at the remembrance, and Barbara half unclosed her gentle lips.

"Please your Highness, I knew the man's affection for his ship, and I loved him better than the timber; he would have destroyed me in his anger but for poor Barbara."

"That is nothing to us; at the least, fetters must be your portion."

Barbara involuntarily sank on her knees, in an attitude of supplication. Robin knelt also, and by her side.

So touching was the scene, that Cromwell smiled while he laid his hand on her head, and with the other raised the long chain his daughter had given the modest bower-maiden, and which had remained suspended from her neck, he threw it over the shoulders of Robin, so that it encircled them both.

"We are clumsy at such matters," he continued, "but the Lord bless you! and may every virtuous woman in England meet with so warm a heart, and so wise a head, to love her and direct her ways—though the outward fashioning of the man be somewhat of the strangest."