may
be transported instead of hanged."

CHAPTER LXXIX.

But gasping heaved the breath that Lara drew,
And dull the film along his dim eye grew.--BYRON.

The light broke partially through the half-closed shutters of the room
in which lay Lord Ulswater, who, awakened to sense and pain by the
motion of the carriage, had now relapsed into insensibility. By the side
of the sofa on which he was laid, knelt Clarence, bathing one hand with
tears violent and fast; on the opposite side leaned over, with bald
front, and an expression of mingled fear and sorrow upon his intent
countenance, the old steward; while, at a little distance, Lord
Westborough, who had been wheeled into the room, sat mute in his chair,
aghast with bewilderment and horror, and counting every moment to the
arrival of the surgeon, who had been sent for. The stranger to whom the
carriage belonged stood by the window, detailing in a low voice to
the chaplain of the house what particulars of the occurrence he was
acquainted with, while the youngest scion of the family, a boy of about
ten years, and who in the general confusion had thrust himself unnoticed
into the room, stood close to the pair, with open mouth and thirsting
ears and a face on which childish interest at a fearful tale was
strongly blent with the more absorbed feeling of terror at the truth.

Slowly Lord Ulswater opened his eyes; they rested upon Clarence.

"My brother! my brother!" cried Clarence, in a voice of powerful
anguish, "is it thus--thus that you have come hither to--" He stopped
in the gushing fulness of his heart. Extricating from Clarence the only
hand he was able to use, Lord Ulswater raised it to his brow, as if in
the effort to clear remembrance; and then, turning to Wardour, seemed to
ask the truth of Clarence's claim,--at least so the old man interpreted
the meaning of his eye, and the faint and scarce intelligible words
which broke from his lips.

"It is; it is, my honoured lord," cried he, struggling with his emotion;
"it is your brother, your lost brother, Clinton L'Estrange." And as he
said these words, Clarence felt the damp chill hand of his brother press
his own, and knew by that pressure and the smile--kind, though brief
from exceeding pain--with which the ill-fated nobleman looked upon him,
that the claim long unknown was at last acknowledged, and the ties long
broken united, though in death.

The surgeon arrived: the room was cleared of all but Clarenc