The Buccaneer - A Tale

"Perhaps I was wrong in the means I adopted; but I longed for an

honest name, and it occurred to me that Sir Robert Cecil could be

frightened, if not persuaded, into procuring my pardon. God is my judge

that I was weary of my reckless habits, and panted for active but legal

employment. A blasted oak will tumble to the earth, if struck by a

thunderbolt,--like a withy. Then my child! I knew that Lady Cecil cared

for her, though, good lady, she little thought, when she first saw the

poor baby, that it was the child of a Buccaneer. She believed it the

offspring of a pains-taking trader, who had served her husband. She

guessed the truth in part afterwards, but had both piety and pity in her

bosom, and did not make the daughter suffer for the father's sin. I

loved the girl!--But your Highness is yourself a father, and would not

like to feel ashamed to look your own child in the face. I threatened

Sir Robert to make known all--and expose these documents----"

The Skipper drew from his vest the same bundle of papers which he had

used in that room, almost on that very spot, to terrify the stricken

Baronet, a few months before. Sir Robert Cecil had remained totally

unconscious of the explanations that had been made, and seemed neither

to know of, nor to heed, the presence of Dalton, nor the important

communication he had given--his eyes wandering from countenance to

countenance of the assembled group,--a weak, foolish smile resting

perpetually on his lip; yet the instant he caught a glimpse of the

packet the Buccaneer held in his hand, his memory returned: he staggered

from his daughter--who, after her appeal to Cromwell, clung to her

father's side, as if heroically resolved to share his disgrace to the

last--and grasped at the papers.

"What need of keeping them?" said the Protector, much affected at the

scene: "give them to him, give them to him."

Dalton obeyed, and Sir Robert clutched them with the avidity of a

maniac: he stared at them, enwreathed as they were by his thin,

emaciated fingers, and then, bursting into a mad fit of exulting

laughter, fell prostrate on the floor, before any one had sufficiently

recovered from the astonishment his renewed strength had occasioned, to

afford him any assistance. He was immediately raised by Constantia and

his attendants, and conveyed to his own apartment, still holding fast

the papers, though he gave little other sign of life. There was another,

besides his daughter, who followed the stricken man--his nephew Walter.