“A confession I have to make—dying words of repentance I have to speak,” exclaimed Aldarin, as he gazed upon the crowded castle yard.
“Thou dost remember, Sir Geoffrey, that twenty years ago we saw each others faces in the wilds of Palestine?”
“I do, I do!” exclaimed the knight, as a mingled expression of bitter memory and deep feeling passed over his wrinkled visage. “Twenty years agone, we saw each other’s faces within the walls of Jerusalem.”
The sound of a hurried and uneven footstep broke upon the air, then a wild shout echoed from the castle hall, and in an instant, the Lord Guiseppo rushed from the hall door and confronted the Scholar Aldarin, his face pale as death, his eyes rolling madly to and fro, while his trembling right hand shook the parchment scroll above his head.
“This scroll, my father: what means its words of omen? Yon blackning crowd—their looks of vengeance—what means it all, my father?”
Aldarin advanced, and flung his arms around the form of his son, gathering him to his heart in the embrace of a father.
And as he gathered him to his heart, he whispered a few brief words in the ear of the Lord Guiseppo, those words thrilled the youth to the very soul; for his eye flashed brighter than ever, and his cheek grew more deathly pale.
“Thy oath—thy oath!” hissed the hollow whisper of Aldarin.
Guiseppo turned suddenly round, he flung himself at the feet of Sir Geoffrey, and looked up into his face with a voice of anguish, as he shrieked.
“Spare my father—spare, oh! spare the weak old man!”