t I have a proof here that seems
incontestable, even had I not the proof of your face to which I have
been blind these months. Blind with the eyes of my body, at least. The
eyes of my soul saw and recognized you when first they fell on you in
Perth. The voice of the blood ordered me then to your side, and though
I heard its call, I understood not what it meant. Read this letter,
boy--the letter that you were to have carried to Colonel Pride."

With his eyes still fixed in a gaze of stupefaction upon Galliard's
face, Kenneth took the paper. Then slowly, involuntarily almost it
seemed, he dropped his glance to it, and read. He was long in reading,
as though the writing presented difficulties, and his two companions
watched him the while, and waited. At last he turned the paper over,
and examined seal and superscription as if suspicious that he held a
forgery.

But in some subtle, mysterious way--that voice of the blood perchance
to which Crispin had alluded--he felt conviction stealing down upon his
soul. Mechanically he moved across to the table, and sat down. Without a
word, and still holding the crumpled letter in his clenched hand, he set
his elbows on the table, and, pressing his temples to his palms, he sat
there dumb. Within him a very volcano raged, and its fires were fed with
loathing--loathing for this man whom he had ever hated, yet never as he
hated him now, knowing him to be his father. It seemed as if to all
the wrongs which Crispin had done him during the months of their
acquaintanceship he had now added a fresh and culminating wrong by
discovering this parentage.

He sat and thought, and his soul grew sick. He probed for some flaw,
sought for some mistake that might have been made. And yet the more
he thought, the more he dwelt upon his youth in Scotland, the more
convinced was he that Crispin had told him the truth. Pre-eminent
argument of conviction to him was the desire of the Ashburns that he
should marry Cynthia. Oft he had marvelled that they, wealthy, and even
powerful, selfish and ambitious, should have selected him, the scion of
an obscure and impoverished Scottish house, as a bridegroom for their
daughter. The news now before him made their motives clear; indeed, no
other motive could exist, no other explanation could there be. He was
the heir of Castle Marleigh, and the usurpers sought to provide against
the day when another revolution might oust them and restore the rightful
owners.

Some