ver enter."

Jocelyn endeavoured to speak, but his emotion overpowered him.

"I have already told you that your father rendered me a service
impossible to be adequately requited," pursued the Puritan. "What that
service was I will one day inform you. Suffice it now, that it bound me
to him in chains firmer than brass. Willingly would I have laid down my
life for him, if he had desired it. Gladly would I have taken his place
in the Fleet prison, if that could have procured him liberation. Unable
to do either, I watched over him while he lived--and buried him when
dead."

"O Sir, you have bound me to you as strongly as you were bound to my
father," cried Jocelyn. "For the devotion shown to him, I hold myself
eternally your debtor."

The Puritan regarded him steadfastly for a moment.

"What if I were to put these professions to the test?" he asked.

"Do so," Jocelyn replied earnestly. "My life is yours!"

"Your life!" exclaimed Hugh Calveley, grasping his arm almost fiercely,
while his eye blazed. "Consider what you offer."

"I need not consider," Jocelyn rejoined. "I repeat my life is yours, if
you demand it."

"Perhaps I _shall_ demand it," cried Hugh Calveley. "Ere long, perhaps."

"Demand it when you will," Jocelyn said.

"Father!" Aveline interposed, "do not let the young man bind himself by
this promise. Release him, I pray of you."

"The promise cannot be recalled, my child," the Puritan replied. "But I
shall never claim its fulfilment save for some high and holy purpose."

"Are you sure your purpose _is_ holy, father?" Aveline said in a low
tone.

"What mean you, child?" cried Hugh Calveley, knitting his brows. "I am
but an instrument in the hands of Heaven, appointed to do its work; and
as directed, so I must act. Heaven may make me the scourge of the
oppressor and evil-doer, or the sword to slay the tyrant. I may die a
martyr for my faith, or do battle for it with carnal weapons. For all
these I am ready; resigning myself to the will of God. Is it for
nothing, think'st thou, that this young man--the son of my dear departed
friend--has been brought hither at this particular conjuncture? Is it
for nothing that, wholly unsolicited, he has placed his life at my
disposal, and in doing so has devoted himself to a great cause? Like
myself he hath wrongs to avenge, and the Lord of Hosts will give him
satisfaction."

"But not in the way you propose, father," Aveline rejoined. "Heaven
will assuredly give