then, as if he had
unburdened his heart of its weary load, he resumed his way.

The grey twilight was fast merging into night, as he approached the
little inn, nor was it without emotion that he watched the light that
streamed from the windows across the road. Many an evening of his happy
boyhood had been passed beside that humble hearth--many a thrilling tale
and many a merry story had he listened to, there. Beneath that roof it
was he first imbibed the proud thoughts of his house and family, and
learned to know the estimation in which men held his name. It was there
he first felt the spirit of chieftainship, and there, too, he had first
devoted himself to the cause of his country. Alas! these were but sad
memories, how he had lived to find himself deceived, by every one he had
trusted; falsehood and treachery in so many shapes surrounded him, that
it needed only the extinction of hope to make him feel his life a weary
and unprofitable load. He stood for a few seconds before the door, and
listened with an indignant spirit to the coarse revelry of the soldiers
who caroused within. Their very laughter smote upon his ear like
derision, and he turned away from the spot, angry and impatient. Some
vague resolve to return home and take a last farewell of his father, was
the only plan he could fix on; whither, afterwards, or how, he knew not,
nor did he care. Like most men who attribute their failures in life to
evil destinies that sway them, and not to their own faults and follies,
his fatalism urged him to a recklessness of the future, and in place of
hope there sprung up in his heart a strange feeling of wonder to think,
what trials and straits fortune might yet have in store for him. He
often deliberated with himself how he should meet, and how part with his
father--whether acknowledge that he knew the secret of the deceit that
had been practised upon him, or whether he should conceal that knowledge
within his own bosom. To do the latter was his final resolve. To spare
the old man the added misery of knowing that his son had detected his
criminality, was the suggestion of his better and purer feeling, and
even though his leaving him should thus be wanting in the only excuse
he could proffer, he preferred this to the misery another course would
entail.

At last he reached the old gateway, and often as it had been his lot to
bring beneath its shadow a heavy and sorrow-struck heart, never had he
passed it so deeply depressed