ly, "I take the responsibility for it.
But I began this talk, Aaron, not to intrude my troubles on you, but
hoping to lighten yours. If I could see you smile, Aaron----"

"Drop it!" cried the warper; and then, going closer to him: "You would
hae seen me smile, ay, and heard me laugh, gin you had been here when
Mrs. McLean came yont to read your book to me. She fair insistit on
reading the terrible noble bits to me, and she grat they were so
sublime; but the sublimer they were, the mair I laughed, for I ken
you, Tommy, my man, I ken you."

He spoke with much vehemence, and, after all, our hero was not
perfect. He withdrew stiffly to the other room. I think it was the use
of the word Tommy that enraged him.

But in a very few minutes he scorned himself, and was possessed by a
pensive wonder that one so tragically fated as he could resent an old
man's gibe. Aaron misunderstood him. Was that any reason why he should
not feel sorry for Aaron? He crossed the hallan to the kitchen door,
and stopped there, overcome with pity. The warper was still crouching
by the fire, but his head rested on his chest; he was a weary,
desolate figure, and at the other side of the hearth stood an empty
chair. The picture was the epitome of his life, or so it seemed to the
sympathetic soul at the door, who saw him passing from youth to old
age, staring at the chair that must always be empty. At the same
moment Tommy saw his own future, and in it, too, an empty chair. Yet,
hard as was his own case, at least he knew that he was loved; if her
chair must be empty, the fault was as little hers as his, while
Aaron----

A noble compassion drew him forward, and he put his hand determinedly
on the dear old man's shoulder.

"Aaron," he said, in a tremble of pity, "I know what is the real
sorrow of your life, and I rejoice because I can put an end to it. You
think that Jean Myles never cared for you; but you are strangely
wrong. I was with my mother to the last, Aaron, and I can tell you,
she asked me with her dying breath to say to you that she loved you
all the time."

Aaron tried to rise, but was pushed back into his chair. "Love cannot
die," cried Tommy, triumphantly, like the fairy in the pantomime;
"love is always young----"

He stopped in mid-career at sight of Aaron's disappointing face. "Are
you done?" the warper inquired. "When you and me are alane in this
house there's no room for the both o' us, and as I'll never hae it
said that I mad