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The sunbeam stealing through the small panes of the narrow window,
tinted with its warm glow, the dusky stain, which dyed the floor, and
shone upon the massive forehead of the Unknown, as seated beside the
table, his gaze rested upon the papers and manuscripts which were scattered
there.

From the moment when Jacopo left the room, in obedience to his commands,
he had remained in the same position, his head drooped, his eye
fixed upon those manuscripts, his pale and delicate hand resting upon the
table. Sometimes a smile wreathed his thin lips—again his eyes, sunk
deeper beneath the down-drawn brow, and shone with a sad, gloomy lustre—
and then his face was calm and cold again, immoveable and statue-like
as his form.

One finger rested upon a golden coin, which bore an ancient date, and
an inscription in bold characters, somewhat worn by time. Whenever
his eye wandered to this coin, his gaze grew glassy; his lips were compressed;
his forehead was darkened by a single vein, which rising from
the brows, swelled beneath the pale skin, in distinct and—almost hideous—
prominence.

Then his face was imbued by an expression, which gave a kindly
smile to his lips, a clear and tranquil light to his eyes. It was a look
of indescribable calm, indicating a heart full of peace, a soul at rest with
God and man.

He bent down again to the papers which covered the table, examined
them one by one, muttering all the while to himself, while his face changed
from light to shadow, from that look of indescribable calm, to one steeped
in dark and repulsive emotion.

Thus an hour passed away.

When the hour was gone, and the sunbeam wandered from the pale
brow of the Unknown, to the papers on the table, there was a footstep
on the stairway which led to Madeline's chamber. It was the footstep
of a strong man, completely unnerved by some powerful emotion; it
echoed through the passage at the head of the stairs, and Reginald Lyndulfe
stood upon the threshold of that fatal room.

Clad as you doubtless remember, in that blue hunting shirt, which concealed
his scarlet uniform, with knife and powder horn at his side, and
rifle on his shoulder, he paused upon the threshold, while his chesnut
hair, floating carelessly from beneath his cap, could not relieve the death-like
pallor of his face.

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He started as his gaze rested upon the Unknown, and resting one arm
against the door-post, muttered in a half-audible tone—“A stranger here!
What can this mean? The negro told me that the house was deserted,
and as for old Peter I passed him, as he was sleeping in the arbor.”

The Unknown raised his eyes, and calmly surveyed the manly form,
which—framed in the doorway—stood hesitating on the threshold.

“Ah! Is it you, Reginald!” he said with a smile—“Come in my Lord.
Take a seat on—is there no chair? Well then take a seat on the bed; it
is covered with dust, but you wont mind that.”

“You know my name?” ejaculated Reginald, with a look of immeasurable
surprise, and then relapsing into a look and attitude of aristocratic
hauteur, he exclaimed—“You have the advantage of me, sir. I do not
know you.”

“And yet I stood beside your father, when he placed this Medal about
your Mother's neck, the day before she embarked for England. It was
in the island of Jamaica—at your father's plantation—twenty-one years
ago.”

These words pronounced in that calm, even voice, with an expressive
movement of the small white hand, had the effect of magic. The face of
Reginald became frightfully pale, he staggered into the room, and placed
his hands upon the table, while his eyes were rivetted to the face of the
unknown.

“You—stood—by—my—father—” he gasped, speaking with a choking
sensation in his throat—“You!”

“Here is the medal,” said the unknown, carelessly extending his hand—
“You can examine it at your leisure. I saw your father place it about
your mother's neck twenty-one years ago.”

But Reginald did not grasp the medal; he saw the cross and the inscription
which it bore, and shrank away from it, as though its touch was
Death.

“Your name—” faltered Reginald.

“Rolof Sener, my child. The Swedish traveller, of whom you've
doubtless heard your father speak?”

“Rolof Sener!” echoed Reginald, and he sunk back on the bed—whose
coverlet yet bore the print of Madeline's form—pressing his hand nervously
to his forehead, for his brain was throbbing with intense torture: “Rolof
Sener! Yes; my father has spoken of you—oftentime. But you do not
look like a very aged man, and Rolof Sener, eighteen years ago, was at
least fifty years old.”

He raised his eyes, and for the first time, discovered that the figure of
Rolof Sener was characterized by a deformity, which seemed to have been
subdued by a careful mode of dress. His shoulders were broad and high;
his spine marked by an unsightly curvature; indeed, looking at him, from
the side, instead of face to face, the head of Rolof seemed to rest against

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rather than upon his shoulders. You would not perchance call him a
hunchback, and yet his deformity—not so much observable at a front view,
and with his head bent over the table, in the act of writing—was now
painfully apparent.

“Yes, I was with your father on that occasion, twenty-one years ago,”
said Rolof Sener, turning his chair so that he sat face to face with Reginald—
“And with him at his Jamaica plantation on another occasion.
Toward the close of the year 1757, when your father received the first
intelligence of that two-fold calamity, which converted him,—Clarence
Albert—the younger, nay the youngest son, into a Peer of the Realm,
yes, Duke of Lyndulfe, with a rent roll of one hundred thousand pounds,
per year. I remember it well!”

“Two-fold calamity,” muttered Reginald, passing his hand over his
forehead—“I have heard of it; but not from my father's lips. An aged
peasant at Lyndulfe told me not more than a year since, that my grand-father,
John, Duke of Lyndulfe, and his eldest son, Ranulph John, died
about the same time, by a strange accident.”

“A very strange accident—” and the face of Rolof Sener was darkened
by that solitary vein—“Remarkably strange!” There was a mocking
smile upon his lips.

“What mean you? My grand-father was thrown from his horse, and
my uncle—his eldest son—was killed, by the horse, in the attempt to
save his father's life.”

The color came to Reginald's face once more; his deep blue eye flashed
with anger.

“And the old Duke was found dead, beside his dead steed,” continued
Rolof in an absent tone—“As for Ranulph John, his body was found in a
ditch, so hideously mangled, the face trodden as though by horse's hoofs,
that his best friends, could only know him by some fragment of his dress.
It was a strange accident, and by that accident your father, the youngest
of three sons, became Duke of Lyndulfe.”

Again that cold and mocking smile, played around the thin lips of Rolof
Sener.

“Three sons?” echoed Reginald with a start—“There were but two—
my father and his Elder Brother.”

“Three, my child, three. A son younger than Ranulph John, but older
than your father, who had been born on the German possessions of your
House, and enjoyed those possessions in his mother's right. His name
was Gaspard Michael; he bore the title of Count, and was something of
a German as much by feeling and education, as by his birth. Three
sons, my”—

“Hold,—” Reginald once more pressed his hand to his forehead—
“This is not so. At least,” he hesitated—“I never heard of it before.”

“You are young, handsome, fond of the sex, and with no disinclination

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for a duel, now and then; the very type of a gallant cavalier, and therefore
it is to be presumed, that you have heard of everything. Is it not my
Lord?”

The mocking scorn which had lingered about Rolof's lips, now
mounted to his eyes. There is nothing in the world, so cutting in its
calm contempt, as the sneer of an old man, who turns all the fire of Youth,
into ice with his glance, and withers its warmest hope, with one cold
look.

“You are disposed to jest with me,” said Reginald, while the blood
rushed to his face. “Still, I must repeat, that I never heard of this Gaspard
Michael. He died young?”

“He disappeared, soon after the double-calamity,” replied Rolof calmly
“There were proofs of his death, or else your father would not have sue
ceeded to the title and estates of Lyndulfe.”

“Of course he left no heir,” said Reginald carelessly.

“Suppose he did leave an heir,” replied Rolof Sener, in that peculiar
tone which penetrated the listener's heart, “Or, to carry out, the hypothesis;
suppose that heir is in existence at this moment? What then?”

Reginald's face was shadowed by a cloud.

“It is impossible,” he said—“You are dreaming.”

“What then?” repeated the singular personage, with a latent laughter
in his eye.

“You mock me,”—and Reginald's eye shone with anger, while he
could not turn his gaze aside from the pale face of Rolof; “In the first
place, Gaspard Michael, never lived. True, I have your word,—or your
jest—as proofs of his existence. In the second place, even if his existence
were no fable, by your own admission, he died and left no heir.
There is no need, ha, ha, no need of your `what then?' my good sir.”

It was pleasant to see Reginald laugh; his teeth were so white; his
blue eyes so full of Youth and Hope. And then he was Twenty-Two!

Twenty-Two, delicious age, when some fragrance from Paradise, still
clings to the flowers of Earth; when every pulse beats Pleasure; and the
expanding eye looks through the Future, and beholds only the blossoms
and sunshine of that glorious landscape, without one thought of the Skeleton
whom those blossoms conceal, or one glance for the Grave, which the
sunshine only invents with rosy light.

“Twenty-Two!” Even I who write these words,—and certainly I
am very far from being an old man yet; at least not in the almanac sense
of the phrase—even I look back over the pathway of four years, and wonder
in what dim grave, I buried the Boy of Twenty-Two.

“Twenty-Two!” It is the time of Illusions; sweep them away as you
grow older; but what is there in Life to repay you for those glorious Illusions?
It is the day of Romance—it is soon passed—you awake to the
naked Realities of life; those grim skeletons, which the blossoms of

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Twenty-Two strewed for awhile, with bloom and fragrance.—Said a Philosopher
once, who after a life of intense brain-labor, had brought himself
into communion with the Other World, and forced its Spirits to grant his
desires, `let me be Twenty-Two forever, with its Illusions, its Dreams, its
Loves, and its Hates, and I ask no more.'

It was pleasant, I say, to see Reginald laugh, for he was Twenty-Two.

“What then?” echoed the singular personage, known by the name of
Rolof Sener—“Why Reginald, the Duke of Lyndulfe—that is to be—
will become that most pitiful of all paupers; the heir to the noble blood, and
gilded poverty of a Younger Son. A kind of genteel beggar, who is tolerated
by the great on account of his lineage; a sort of `poor relation' a gentleman
Lazarus, in fact, who haunts the Royal Court, until his sores are
dressed with a pension, and his rags made decent, with a little golden tinsel.
Is't not laughable? Reginald Duke of Lyndulfe, Baron of Marionhurst,
of Dernberg, of Camelford, with a string of other titles that I do not now
remember, and a rent-roll of one hundred thousand a year, suddenly transformed
into plain Captain Reginald, a gentleman of elegant figure, and—
five hundred a year!”

“This is insulting,” cried Reginald, glowing with indignation—“Your
age alone protects you!”

“And if I were younger, you would dissect my lungs with a sma
sword, or search for my brains with a pistol bullet, and thus vindicate
your honor! Bah! I am ashamed of you. Read that!”

He took a letter from the table, and handed it to Reginald.

“What is this, I see! From my father, and dated yesterday; written,
too, from our Camp in Jersey! It is indeed his own handwriting; without
a doubt his signature. What does it mean?”

“Read!” said Rolof.

Reginald read the letter aloud:

“`Rolof:—

“`The plan is good; the project itself confers immortal honor on its
originator. The Army of His Majesty is now in Jersey, as you are aware,
advancing toward the Delaware; the object of the General being the possession
of Philadelphia. But the project will pay us for a thousand Philadelphias;
will end the war, in fact, and bring the revolted colonies to the
foot of the throne. I will be in * * * * * * * * * * at the appointed time, and
at the place you designate. Let your messenger meet me there, with a
line from you, in your own hand, which I will take as a token to go forward.
You will have time to perfect your understanding with our friends
in Philadelphia; we can seize HIM away from HIS camp; conceal HIM for
a few days in Philadelphia, and—the war is at an end—”'

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“What mean these stars?” asked Reginald, his face the very embodiment
of surprise.

“There are ten,” answered Rolof, “and there are just ten letters in the
word Germantown.”

“And my father is coming — but who is this person designated
as `him?”'

“Washington, the rebel leader. He will be here,—at Wissahikon—to-night.
Some days since, he received a letter from Philadelphia, signed
by Jefferson, and other prominent members of the rebel Congress. That
letter designated the Wissahikon as the scene for an important interview,
between Washington and these rebel statesmen; to take place on the last
night of the second week in June.”

“To-night!”

“Yes, to-night he will be here, and the rebel leaders from Philadelphia
will offer him the crown.”

“And my father?” cried Reginald, trembling with agitation.

“He will be here to-night. With a band of trusty Philadelphians, rich
men, my child, friends of the King, he will surround the house in which
the Rebel General and the Rebel Statesmen are in conclave, and take
prisoner, the heart and arm of America, George Washington.”

“It is a magnificent idea!” cried Reginald, in a broken voice, but with
flashing eyes—“And my father, the Duke, will have the honor of this
capture. But what has this to do with Gaspard Michael?”

“You have not yet finished the letter. Read on—” said Rolof Sener.

“`The papers which you have furnished me, in regard to the existence
of the Son of Gaspard Michael, are indeed appalling. Search further
Rolof; assure yourself that this person, of whom you speak, is indeed the
Son of Gaspard Michael. The house of Lyndulfe must not be shaken by
the hand of a Pretender to its wealth and honors. You inform me that
he was living six months ago; I beseech you, my good friend, to spare
no exertions in this matter. Does he live now? What is his condition—
where his place of abode? I assure you, that my first reason for embarking
in your project, was a wish to rivet myself in the favor of the
King, and thus secure his interest against the claims of this—or any other—
Pretender.

Reginald crushed the letter in his fingers, exclaiming with an oath—
“This is indeed a terrible revelation!” Then he buried his face in his
hands, and sat gazing on the floor, with a blank and colorless visage.

Rolof Sener regarded him with a searching look, but with a smile.

“This Gaspard Michael—this Son—where is he?” shouted Reginald,

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as convulsed in every nerve, he started to his feet. “Speak, or by the
* * * above us, I'll throttle you!”

“He lives on the Wissahikon,” said Rolof Sener, in a calm tone, his
face serene and smiling. “Within a mile from where you stand, and—
you wont throttle me.”

“On the Wissahikon!” and Reginald sank back upon the bed. It was
indeed a crushing blow; the mere Chance of this Pretender's existence
was terrible, but the Certainty was madness. Reginald seated on the bed—
printed with the outlines of Madeline's form—felt the Dukedom gliding
from under his feet, even as a hunter, gazing over the brow of a precipice,
feels the solid rock quiver and tremble ere it falls.

“This room is accursed—the very air breathes ruin to me and to my
race!” he muttered, in a wild tone, and gazed with sidelong glance at the
dusky stain near the foot of the bed, where the sunbeam gayly shone.

“What mean you?” asked Rolof, with a look and accent of wonder.

“You know, you must know it,—” cried Reginald, starting up and
pacing the floor—“For you seem to know everything that is evil. Here,
here, twenty-one years ago, on a dark and stormy night, my Mother was
murdered—murdered, even as she struggled in the anguish of a mother's
pains. They tore her babe from her still quivering form—”

His look ghastly, his accent ringing with an emphasis of unutterable
horror, he confronted Rolof Sener, with clenched hands and swelling
chest.

“How know you this?” said the elderly man, very calmly—“Is that
stain near your feet, your mother's blood?”

Reginald started back, with a shudder in every nerve.

“Or does that dingy blood-mark bring to mind, the anguish of a poor
and friendless Orphan Girl, who, struggling in her seducer's arms—in this
room, two years and six months ago—besought his mercy, in the name
of her murdered mother, and besought in vain!”

These words fell upon Reginald like so many mortal thrusts from the
blade of a keen and polished dagger.

“Hold!” he cried,—“Another word, and I will —” he laid his
trembling hand upon the hilt of his hunting-knife, as his face grew purple
with settled rage.

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