ld man fumbled with a waistcoat button. His eyes blinked hard.

"You don't see," he continued, "the one thing that's plain to my eyes,
and it's this--that your only chance of escape is to tell the truth
about the quarrel. If the truth were told, whatever it is, I believe
it would be to your credit--I'll say that for you. If it was to your
credit, even if they believe you guilty of killing Erris Boyne, they'd
touch you lightly. Ah, in the name of the mother you loved, I ask you to
tell the truth about that quarrel! Give it into the hands of the jury,
and let them decide. Haven't you got a heart in you? In the name of
God--"

"Don't speak to me like that," interrupted Dyck, with emotion. "I've
thought of all those things. I hold my peace because--because I hold my
peace. To speak would be to hurt some one I love with all my soul."

"And you won't speak to save me--your father--because you don't love me
with all your soul! Is that it?" asked Miles Calhoun.

"It's different--it's different."

"Ah, it's a woman!"

"Never mind what it is. I will not tell. There are things more shameful
than death."

"Yes," snarled the other. "Rather than save yourself, you bring
dishonour upon him who gave you birth."

Dyck's face was submerged in colour.

"Father," said he, "on my honour I wouldn't hurt you if I could help it,
but I'll not tell the world of the quarrel between that man and myself.
My silence may hurt you, but some one else would be hurt far more if I
told."

"By God, I think you're some mad dreamer slipped out of the ancient
fold! Do you know where you are? You're in jail. If you're found guilty,
you'll be sent to prison at least for the years that'll spoil the making
of your life; and you do it because you think you'll spare somebody.
Well, I ask you to spare me. I don't want the man that's going to
inherit my name, when my time comes, to bring foulness on it. We've been
a rough race, we Calhouns; we've done mad, bad things, perhaps, but none
has shamed us before the world--none but you."

"I have never shamed you, Miles Calhoun," replied his son sharply. "As
the ancients said, 'alis volat propriis'--I will fly with my own wings.
Come weal, come woe, come dark, come light, I have fixed my mind, and
nothing shall change it. You loved my mother better than the rest of the
world. You would have thought it no shame to have said so to your own
father. Well, I say it to you--I'll stand by what my conscience and
my s