confined; but the answer was brief and general--"Where the Lieutenant
should direct."

"Could he not be permitted to share the imprisonment of his father, Sir
Geoffrey Peveril?" He forgot not, on this occasion, to add the surname
of his house.

The warder, an old man of respectable appearance, stared, as if at the
extravagance of the demand, and said bluntly, "It is impossible."

"At least," said Peveril, "show me where my father is confined, that I
may look upon the walls which separate us."

"Young gentleman," said the senior warder, shaking his grey head, "I
am sorry for you; but asking questions will do you no service. In this
place we know nothing of fathers and sons."

Yet chance seemed, in a few minutes afterwards, to offer Peveril that
satisfaction which the rigour of his keepers was disposed to deny to
him. As he was conveyed up the steep passage which leads under what is
called the Wakefield Tower, a female voice, in a tone wherein grief and
joy were indescribably mixed, exclaimed, "My son!--My dear son!"

Even those who guarded Julian seemed softened by a tone of such acute
feeling. They slackened their pace. They almost paused to permit him
to look up towards the casement from which the sounds of maternal agony
proceeded; but the aperture was so narrow, and so closely grated, that
nothing was visible save a white female hand, which grasped one of those
rusty barricadoes, as if for supporting the person within, while another
streamed a white handkerchief, and then let it fall. The casement was
instantly deserted.

"Give it me," said Julian to the officer who lifted the handkerchief;
"it is perhaps a mother's last gift."

The old warder lifted the napkin, and looked at it with the jealous
minuteness of one who is accustomed to detect secret correspondence in
the most trifling acts of intercourse.

"There may be writing on it with invisible ink," said one of his
comrades.

"It is wetted, but I think it is only with tears," answered the senior.
"I cannot keep it from the poor young gentleman."

"Ah, Master Coleby," said his comrade, in a gentle tone of reproach,
"you would have been wearing a better coat than a yeoman's to-day, had
it not been for your tender heart."

"It signifies little," said old Coleby, "while my heart is true to my
King, what I feel in discharging my duty, or what coat keeps my old
bosom from the cold weather."

Peveril, meanwhile, folded in his breast the token of his mothe