ill?"

"Suspicions!" cried my mother. "No!--impossible!--suspicions of whom?
You could not think Gerald so base, and who else had an interest
in deception? Besides, the signature is undoubtedly Sir William's
handwriting, and the will was regularly witnessed; suspicions,
Morton,--no, impossible! Reflect, too, how eccentric and humoursome your
uncle always was: suspicions!--no, impossible!"

"Such things have been, my mother, nor are they uncommon: men will
hazard their souls, ay, and what to some are more precious still, their
lives too, for the vile clay we call money. But enough of this now: the
Law,--that great arbiter,--that eater of the oyster, and divider of its
shells,--the Law will decide between us, and if against me, as I suppose
and fear the decision will be,--why, I must be a suitor to fortune
instead of her commander. Give me your blessing, my dearest mother: I
cannot stay longer in this house; to-morrow I leave you."

And my mother did bless me, and I fell upon her neck and clung to it.
"Ah!" thought I, "this blessing is almost worth my uncle's fortune."

I returned to my room; there I saw on the table the case of the sword
sent me by the French king. I had left it with my uncle, on my departure
to town, and it had been found among his effects and reclaimed by me. I
took out the sword, and drew it from the scabbard. "Come," said I, and
I kindled with a melancholy yet a deep enthusiasm, as I looked along the
blade, "come, my bright friend, with thee through this labyrinth which
we call the world will I carve my way! Fairest and speediest of earth's
levellers, thou makest the path from the low valley to the steep hill,
and shapest the soldier's axe into the monarch's sceptre! The laurel
and the fasces, and the curule car, and the emperor's purple,--what are
these but thy playthings, alternately thy scorn and thy reward! Founder
of all empires, propagator of all creeds, thou leddest the Gaul and
the Goth, and the gods of Rome and Greece crumbled upon their altars!
Beneath thee the fires of the Gheber waved pale, and on thy point the
badge of the camel-driver blazed like a sun over the startled East!
Eternal arbiter, and unconquerable despot, while the passions of mankind
exist! Most solemn of hypocrites,--circling blood with glory as with a
halo; and consecrating homicide and massacre with a hollow name, which
the parched throat of thy votary, in the battle and the agony, shouteth
out with its last breath!