dy received the announcement in silence. He felt the bitterness
of such indifference on the part of his older son. "What!" he said to
himself, "when he knows I had such a little while left, could he not be
at home?" Then almost immediately flashed into him the self-reproach
even stronger than his condemnation of his boy: "How much have I done
for him these last ten years to win his love and protect him from evil?"

After supper Mr. Hardy sat down by his wife, and in the very act he
blushed with shame at the thought that he could not recall when he had
spent an evening thus. He looked into her face and asked gently:

"Mary, what do you want me to do? Shall I read as we used to in the
old days?"

"No; let us talk together," replied Mrs. Hardy, bravely driving back
her tears. "I cannot realise what it all means. I have been praying
all day. Do you still have the impression you had this morning?"

"Mary, I am, if anything, even more convinced that God has spoken to
me. The impression has been deepening with me all day. When I looked
into poor Scoville's face, the terrible nature of my past selfish life
almost overwhelmed me. Oh, why have I abused God's goodness to me so
awfully?"

There was silence a moment. Then Mr. Hardy grew more calm. He began
to discuss what he would do the second day. He related more fully the
interview with the men in the shop and his visits to the injured. He
drew Clara to him and began to inquire into her troubles in such a
tender, loving way, that Clara's proud, passionate, wilful nature broke
down, and she sobbed out her story to him as she had to her mother the
night before.

Mr. Hardy promised Clara that he would see James the next day. It was
true that James Caxton had only a week before approached Mr. Hardy and
told him in very manful fashion of his love for his daughter; but Mr.
Hardy had treated it as a child's affair, and, in accordance with his
usual policy in family matters, had simply told Clara and Bess to
discontinue their visits at the old neighbour's. But now that he heard
the story from the lips of his own daughter, he saw the seriousness of
it, and crowding back all his former pride and hatred of the elder
Caxton, he promised Clara to see James the next day.

Clara clung to her father in loving surprise. She was bewildered, as
were all the rest, by the strange event that had happened to her
father; but she never had so felt his love before, and forgetting