only
the message he sent me in his letter to you--that he will some time
write me." Then Larry took Betty's letter from his pocket and turned
it over and over, sadly. "This letter tells me more than all else, but
it sets me strangely adrift in my thoughts. It's not at all like what
I had thought it might be."

Amalia leaned forward eagerly. "Oh, tell me more--a little, what you
thought might be."

"This letter has added more to the heartache than all else that could
be. Either Harry King is my son--Richard Kildene--or he is the son of
the man who hated me and brought me sorrow. There you see the reason
he would tell me nothing. He could not."

"But how is it that you do not know your own son? It is so strange."

Larry's eyes filled as he looked off over the arid plains. "It's a
long story--that. I told it to him once to try to stir his heart
toward me, but it was of no use, and I'll not tell it now--but this.
I'd never looked on my boy since I held him in my arms--a heartbroken
man--until he came to me there--that is, if he were he. But if Harry
King is my son, then he is all the more a liar and a coward--if the
claim against him is true. I can't have it so."

"It is not so. He is no liar and no coward." Amalia spoke with
finality.

"I tell you if he is not my son, then he is the son of the man who
hated me--but even that man will not own him as his son. The little
girl who wrote this letter to me--she pleads with me to come on and
set them all right: but even she who loved him--who has loved him, can
urge no proof beyond her own consciousness, as to his identity; it is
beyond my understanding."

"The little girl--she--she has loved your son--she has loved
Harry--Harry King? Whom has she loved?" Amalia only breathed the
question.

"She has not said. I only read between the lines."

"How is it so--you read between lines? What is it you read?"

Larry saw he was making a mistake and resumed hurriedly: "I'll tell
you what little I know later, and we will go there and find out the
rest, but it may be more to my sorrow than my joy. Perhaps that's why
I'm taking you there--to be a help to me--I don't know. I have a
friend there who will take us both in, and who will understand as no
one else."

"I go to neither my joy nor my sorrow. They are of the world. I will
be no more of the world--but I will live only in love--to the Christ.
So may I find in my heart peace--as the sweet sisters who guarded me
in my child