name came from his father's lips, and then his
mind went back to the words that had so lately passed between them.
"Let me be your father, though I am a dying man." Ah! sweet,
beautiful, blind fallacy--could he not let it be?

The end was very near; the delirium passed away, and Stephen Orry
opened his eyes. The great creature was as quiet as a child now, and
as soft and gentle as a child's was his deep hoarse voice. He knew
that he had been wandering in his mind, and when he looked into
Jason's face a pale smile crossed his own.

"I thought I had found her," he said, very simply, "my poor young
wife that once was; it was she that I lost so long ago, and did such
wrong by."

Jason's throat was choking him, but he stammered out, "Lie still,
sir, lie still and rest."

But Stephen Orry talked on in the same simple way: "Ah, how silly I
am! I forgot you didn't know."

"Lie still and rest," said Jason again.

"There was someone with her, too. I thought I was her son--her child
and mine, that was to come when I left her. And, only think, I looked
again, and it seemed to be you. Yes, you--for it was the face of him
that fetched me out of the sea. I thought you were my son indeed."

Then Jason could bear up no longer. He flung himself down on his
knees by the bedside, and buried his face in the dying man's breast.

"Father," he sobbed, "I _am_ your son."

But Stephen Orry only smiled, and answered very quietly, "Ah, yes, I
remember--that was part of our bargain, my good lad. Well, God bless
you, my son. God bless and speed you."

And that was the end of Orry.

THE BOOK OF MICHAEL SUNLOCKS.

CHAPTER I.

RED JASON.

Now the facts of this history must stride on some four years, and
come to a great crisis in the lives of Greeba and Jason. Every event
of that time seemed to draw these two together, and the first of the
circumstances that bound them came very close on the death of Stephen
Orry. Only a few minutes after Greeba, at the bidding of her two
brothers, Stean and Thurstan, had left Jason alone with the dying
man, she had parted from them without word or warning, and fled back
to the little hut in Port-y-Vullin. With a wild laboring of heart,
panting for breath and full of dread, she had burst the door open,
fearing to see what she dare not think of; but, instead of the evil
work she looked for, she had found Jason on his knees by the bedside,
sobbing as if his heart would break, and Stephen O