ith and about him,
know that he never told a lie! If the accusation be just--
and oh! may God avert this calamity--Frank will say so. He
will tell how and when and why this poison of disaffection
entered his heart; he will trace out his days of temptation
and struggle and fall, without a shadow of concealment; and
if this sad time is to come, even then do not desert him.
Bethink you of his boyhood, his warm, ardent nature, burning
for some field of glorious enterprise, and dazzled by
visions of personal distinction. How could he judge the
knotted questions which agitate the deepest minds of great
thinkers? A mere pretence, a well-painted scene of
oppression or sufferance, might easily enlist the sympathies
of a boy whose impulses have more than once made him bestow
on the passing beggar the little hoardings of weeks. And
yet, with all these, he is not guilty,--I never can believe
that he could be! Oh, sir, you know not, as I know, how
treason in him would be like a living falsehood; how the act
of disloyalty would be the utter denial of all those dreams
of future greatness which, over our humble fireside, were
his world! To serve the Kaiser,--the same gracious master
who had rewarded and ennobled our great kinsman,--to win
honors and distinctions that should rival his; to make our
ancient name hold a high place in the catalogue of
chivalrous soldiers,--these were Frank's ambitions. If you
but knew how we, his sisters, weak and timid girls, seeking
the quiet paths of life, where our insignificance might
easiest be shrouded,--if you knew how we grew to feel the
ardor that glowed in his heart, and actually caught up the
enthusiasm that swelled the young soldier's bosom! you have
seen the world well and long; and, I ask, is this the clay
of which traitors are fashioned? Be a father to him, then,
who has none; and may God let you feel all the happiness a
child's affection can bestow in return! "We are a sad
heritage, Sir Count! for I now must plead for another, not
less a prisoner than my poor brother. Kate is in a durance
which, if more splendid, is sad as his. The ceremony of
betrothal--which, if I am rightly told, is a mere
ceremonial--has consigned her to a distant land and a life
of dreary seclusion. There is no longer a reaso