The Poacher by Frederick Marryat

Our hero was not sorry to be left alone; for the first time he felt the absence of Mary a relief. He was almost as much bewildered as poor Mary with the strange discovery; his father a great landed proprietor, one of the first men in the county, universally respected -- in the first society! his mother, as he knew by Mary's letters written long ago, courted and sought after, loved and admired! If he had made a resolution -- a promise he might say -- when a mere child that he would take the onus of the deed upon his own shoulders, to protect his father, then a poacher and in humble life, how much more was it his duty, now that his father would so feel any degradation -- now that, being raised so high, his fall would be so bitter, his disgrace so deeply felt, and the stigma so doubly severe!

"No, no," thought Joey, "were I to impeach my father now -- to accuse him of a deed which would bring him to the scaffold -- I should not only be considered his murderer, but it would be said I had done it to inherit his possessions; I should be considered one who had sacrificed his father to obtain his property. I should be scouted, shunned, and deservedly despised; the disgrace of my father having been hanged would be a trifle compared with the reproach of a son having condemned a parent to the gallows. Now I am doubly bound to keep to my resolution; and come what may the secret shall die with me: " and Joey slept soundly that night.