"What is it?"
"Destroy with your own hands that forged testimony of your guilt. Your
nephew does not wish to bring an old man's grey hairs to an ignominious
grave."
He took the deed, and, turning aside his head, committed it to the
flames. He appeared to breathe more freely when it was consumed; but the
struggle had been too severe even for his unyielding frame, iron-bound
though it seemed. As he turned trembling from the hearth, he sank into
his chair, threw his hands over his face, and groaned deeply. The next
moment he fixed his eyes steadily on me. A glassy brightness suddenly
shot over them; a dimness followed like the shadows of death. He held
out his hand; his head bowed; and he bade adieu to the world and its
interests for ever!
CLITHEROE CASTLE;
OR,
THE LAST OF THE LACIES.
"By that painful way they pass
Forth to an hill that was both steep and high;
On top whereof a sacred chapel was,
And eke a little hermitage thereby."
--SPENSER'S _Fairy Queen_.
Clitheroe, _the hill ly the-waters_, the ancient seat of the Lacies,
carries back the mind to earlier periods and events--to a rude and
barbarous age--where justice was dispensed, and tribute paid, by the
feudatories to their lords, whose power, little less than arbitrary, was
held directly from the crown.
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