"Thank you," he replied whom I was addressing; "but Mr. Tunstall is not the name of my friend."
Then I feared he did take me for a spy, and I cried out, greatly moved, "As I do hope to go to heaven one [{163}] day, and not to hell, Master Rugeley, I speak the truth, and my warning is an urgent one."
Then I heard some one within the house, who said, "Open the door, Master Rugeley. I should know that voice. Let the speaker in."
Methought I, too, knew the voice of the person who thus spoke. The door was opened, and I entered a room dimly lighted by one candle.
"Oh, for God's sake," I cried, "if a priest is here, hide him forthwith."
"Are you a Catholic, my child?"
I looked up to the person who put this question to me, and gave a sudden cry, I know not whether of terror or joy; for great as was the change which the lapse of years, and great inward and outward changes, had wrought in his aspect, I saw it was my father.
"I am Constance," I cried; "Constance Sherwood! Oh, my dear father!" and then fell at his feet weeping.
After an instant's, astonishment and fixed gazing on my face, he recognized me, who was, I doubt not, more changed than himself, and received me with a great paternal kindness and the tenderest greeting imaginable, yet tempered with reserve and so much of restraint as should befit one who, for Christ's sake, had dissevered himself from the joys, albeit not from the affections, of the natural heart.
"Oh, my good child, my own dear Constance," he said; "hath God in his bounty given thy poor father a miraculous sight of thee before his death, or art thou come verily in flesh and blood to warn him of his danger?"