"I am Walter Cecil!" exclaimed our old acquaintance Walter; "my nom de guerre is no longer necessary."
"It needed not that one should come from the dead to tell us that," said the Protector, impatiently; "but there are former passages we would have explained. What means the villain by his charge? Speak, Dalton, and unravel us this mystery."
"It is well known to your Highness, that few loved the former powers more than Sir Herbert Cecil; and truth to say, he was wild, and daring, and bad——"
"Dalton!" exclaimed the young man, in an upbraiding tone.
"Well, young master, I will say no more about it. Gold is a great tempter, as your Highness knows; and it tempted yonder gentleman, with whom God has dealt. He is a different sight to look upon now, to what he was the morning he sought me to commit a crime, which, well for my own sake, and the sake of others, I did not commit. He came to me——"
"Mercy! mercy! I claim your Highness' mercy!" said Constantia, falling on her knees, and holding her hands, clasped and trembling, above her head. "It is not meet that the child hear thus publicly of her father's sin! The old man, your Highness, has not power to speak!"
"Lady," continued Dalton, "he could not deny—But my tale will soon be finished, and it will take a load off your heart, and off the hearts of others. Sir Herbert did not die. I conveyed him to another land; but the papers—the instructions I had received, remained in my possession. Sir Herbert's wild character—his fondness for sea-excursions—his careless life, led to the belief that he had perished in some freak, in which he too often indulged. His brother apparently mourned and sorrowed; but, in time, the dynasty of England changed, exactly as he would have wished it—the Commonwealth soon gave the missing brother's lands to the man who was its friend, who had fought and laboured in its cause, and seemed to forget that any one else had any right to the possessions:—but the son of the injured remained as a plague-spot to his sight. I had but too good reason to know how this son of this elder brother was regarded, and I had learned to love the lad: he was ever about the beach, and fond of me, poor fellow! because I used to bring him little gifts from foreign parts—by way, I suppose, of a private atonement for grievous wrong. I took upon myself the removing of that boy to save him from a worse fate, for I loved him as my own child; and there he stands, and can say whether my plain speech be true or false. I was myself a father but a little while before I spirited him away from a dangerous home to a safe ship. Sir Robert believed they were both dead, and sorrowed not; although he compassed only the removal of the brother, yet the going away of his nephew made his possessions the more secure; for, as he said, times might change, and the boy be restored if he had lived. His disappearance made a great stir at the time; yet there were many went from the land then and were seen no more. I thought to rear him in my own line, but he never took kindly to it, so I just let him have his fling amongst people of his own thinking—gentry, and the like—who knew how to train him better than I did. I kept Sir Herbert safe enough until the act came out which gave Sir Robert right and dominion over his brother's land, declaring the other to have been a malignant, and so forth;—but the spirit was subdued within the banished man; he was bowed and broken, and cared nothing for liberty, but took entirely to religion, and became a monk; and his son, there, has seen him many a time; and it comforted me to find that he died in the belief that God would turn all things right again, and that his child would yet be master of Cecil Place. He died like a good Christian, forgiving his enemies, and saying that adversity had brought his soul to God—more fond of blaming himself than others. As to Walter, he had a desire to visit this country, and, to own the truth, I knew that if Sir Robert failed to procure the pardon I wanted, the resurrection of this youth would be an argument he could not withstand.
"Perhaps I was wrong in the means I adopted; but I longed for an honest name, and it occurred to me that Sir Robert Cecil could be frightened, if not persuaded, into procuring my pardon. God is my judge that I was weary of my reckless habits, and panted for active but legal employment. A blasted oak will tumble to the earth, if struck by a thunderbolt,—like a withy. Then my child! I knew that Lady Cecil cared for her, though, good lady, she little thought, when she first saw the poor baby, that it was the child of a Buccaneer. She believed it the offspring of a pains-taking trader, who had served her husband. She guessed the truth in part afterwards, but had both piety and pity in her bosom, and did not make the daughter suffer for the father's sin. I loved the girl!—But your Highness is yourself a father, and would not like to feel ashamed to look your own child in the face. I threatened Sir Robert to make known all—and expose these documents——"
The Skipper drew from his vest the same bundle of papers which he had used in that room, almost on that very spot, to terrify the stricken Baronet, a few months before. Sir Robert Cecil had remained totally unconscious of the explanations that had been made, and seemed neither to know of, nor to heed, the presence of Dalton, nor the important communication he had given—his eyes wandering from countenance to countenance of the assembled group,—a weak, foolish smile resting perpetually on his lip; yet the instant he caught a glimpse of the packet the Buccaneer held in his hand, his memory returned: he staggered from his daughter—who, after her appeal to Cromwell, clung to her father's side, as if heroically resolved to share his disgrace to the last—and grasped at the papers.
"What need of keeping them?" said the Protector, much affected at the scene: "give them to him, give them to him."