the destroyer of his peace, the betrayer of his daughter's virtue.
Had Edward Hansford witnessed that scene, he had been punished enough
even for his guilt.

"Well, he deserted the trusting girl, and she returned to her now
darkened home; but, alas, how changed! When her child was born, the
innocent offspring of her guilt, in the care attending its nurture, the
violent grief of the mother gave way to a calm and settled melancholy.
All saw that the iron had entered her soul. Her old father died,
blessing and forgiving her, and with touching regard for his memory, she
refused to desecrate his pure name, by permitting the child of shame to
bear it. She called it after a distant relation, who never heard of the
dishonour thus attached to his name. A heart so pure as was the heart of
Mary Howard, could not long bear up beneath this load of shame. She
lingered about five years after the birth of her boy, and on her dying
bed confided the child to me. There in that sacred hour, I vowed to rear
and protect the little innocent, and by God's permission I have kept
that vow."

"Oh, tell me, tell me," said Bernard, wildly, "am I that child of guilt
and shame."

"Alas! Alfred, my son, you are," said the preacher, "but oh, you know
not all the terrible vengeance which a mysterious heaven will this day
visit on the children of your father."

As the awful truth gradually dawned upon him, Bernard cried with deep
emotion.

"And Edward Hansford! tell me what became of him?"

"With the most diligent search I could hear nothing of him for years. At
length I learned that he had come to Virginia, married a young lady of
some fortune and family, and had at last been killed in a skirmish with
the Indians, leaving an only son, an infant in arms, the only remaining
comfort of his widowed mother."

"And that son," cried Bernard, the perspiration bursting from his brow
in the agony of the moment.

"Is Thomas Hansford, who, I fear, this day meets his fate by a brother's
and a rival's hand."

"I demand your proof," almost shrieked the agitated fratricide.

"The name first excited my suspicion," returned Hutchinson, "and made me
warn you from crossing his path, when I saw you the night of the ball at
Jamestown. But confirmation was not wanting, for when this morning I
visited his cell to administer the last consolations of religion to him,
I saw him gazing upon the features in miniature of that very Edward, who
was the author of Mary Howa