“Yes you can, my boy,” returned Berkeley, “I know not whether you will esteem it a compliment or not, Alfred, but yours is an old head on young shoulders, and the heart, which in the season of youth often flits away from the sober path of judgment, seems with you to follow steadily in the wake of reason.”
“If you mean that I am ever ready to sacrifice my own selfish impulses to my duty, I do esteem it as a compliment, though I fear not altogether deserved.”
“Well, then,” said the Governor, “this poor boy, Hansford, who is to suffer death to-morrow, I have had a strange interview concerning him since I last saw you.”
“Aye, with Miss Temple,” returned Bernard. “She told me she had seen you, and that you were as impregnable to assault as the rock of Gibraltar.”
“I thought so too, where treason was concerned,” said Berkeley. “But some how, the leaven of the poor girl's tears is working strangely in my heart; and after I had left her, who should I meet but her old father.”
“Is Colonel Temple here?” asked Bernard, surprised.
“Aye is he, and urged Hansford's claims to pardon with such force, that I had to fly from temptation. Nay he even put his plea for mercy upon the ground of his own former kindness to me.”
“The good old gentleman seems determined to be paid for that hospitality,” said Bernard, with a sneer. “Well!”
“Well, altogether I am almost determined to interpose my reprieve, until the wishes of his majesty are known,” said Berkeley, with some hesitation.
Bernard was silent, for some moments, and the Governor continued.