"Surely, 'tis not the rebel Tyrone that my daughter harbours in the
privacy of her chamber? Speak!--Nay, then hast thou indeed brought an
old man's grey hairs to the grave in sorrow! Treason!--Oh, that I have
lived for this,--and my own flesh and blood hath done it. Out of my
sight, unnatural monster. Dare not to crawl again across my path, lest I
kill thee!"
"O my father! I am indeed innocent." She again threw herself at his
feet, but he spurned her from him as though he loathed her beyond
endurance. Boiling and maddened with rage at the presumption of this
daring rebel, Holt, forgetful of his own danger, seized the light. He
burst open the secret door; but what was his astonishment on beholding,
not the hated form of Tyrone, but the officer of justice himself,
gagged, pinioned, and deprived of his outer dress. The cap and mantle of
Tyrone, by his side, told too plainly of the daring and dangerous
exploit by which his escape had been effected.
The outlaw, soon after his enlargement, finding that the cause he had
espoused was hopeless, and that matters were at the last extremity in
his own fate, and that of his unhappy country,--fearful, too, of drawing
the innocent Constance and her father into the deep vortex of his own
ruin,--made all haste to the capital, where, through the powerful
interest excited in his behalf, aided by his well-known valour and the
influence he was known to possess amongst his countrymen, he received a
free pardon from the Queen.
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