—you bless me—you—you! And I dare not bless again! Let me go—let me go—let me go!" He wrenched himself away from his father's clasp—drowning with loud tone his father's pathetic soothings—out of the house—down the hill—lost to sight in the shades of the falling eve.
CHAPTER VI.
Waife fell on the floor of his threshold, exclaiming, sobbing, moaning, as voice itself gradually died away. The dog, who had been shut out from the house, and remained ears erect, head drooping, close at the door, rushed in as Jasper burst forth. The two listeners at the open casement now stole round; there was the dog, its paw on the old man's shoulder, trying to attract his notice, and whining low.
Tenderly—reverentially, they lift the poor martyr—evermore cleared in their eyes from stain, from question; the dishonoring brand transmuted into the hallowing cross! And when the old man at length recovered consciousness, his head was pillowed on the breast of the spotless, noble preacher; and the decorous English trader, with instinctive deference for repute and respect for law, was kneeling by his side, clasping his hand; and as Waife glanced down, confusedly wondering, Hartopp exclaimed, half sobbing, "Forgive me; you said I should repent if I knew all! I do repent! I do! Forgive me—I shall never forgive myself."
"Have I been dreaming? What is all this? You here, too, Mr. George! But—but there was Another. Gone! ah—gone—gone! lost, lost! Ha! did you overhear us?"
"We overheard you—at that window! See, spite of yourself, Heaven lets your innocence be known, and in that innocence your sublime self-sacrifice."
"Hush! you will never betray me, either of you—never! A father turn against his son!—horrible!"
Again he seemed on the point of swooning. In a few moments more his mind began evidently to wander somewhat; and just as Merle (who with his urchin-guide had wandered vainly over the whole town in search of the peddler, until told that he had been seen in a by-street, stopped and accosted by a tall man
