that insult to the man he must know for his
father. Standing there, he compared the two, marvelling deeply how they
came to be father and son. A likeness he saw now between them, yet
a likeness that seemed but to mark the difference. The one harsh,
resolute, and manly, for all his reckless living and his misfortunes;
the other mild, effeminate, hypocritical and shifty. He read it not on
their countenances alone, but in every line of their figures as they
stood, and in his heart he cursed himself for having been the instrument
to disclose the relationship in which they stood.

The youth's insolent question was followed by a spell of silence.
Crispin could not believe that he had heard aright. At last he stretched
out his hands in a gesture of supplication--he who throughout his
thirty-eight years of life, and despite the misfortunes that had been
his, had never yet stooped to plead from any man.

"Jocelyn," he cried, and the pain in his voice must have melted a heart
of steel, "you are hard. Have you forgotten the story of my miserable
life, the story that I told you in Worcester? Can you not understand how
suffering may destroy all that is lofty in a man; how the forgetfulness
of the winecup may come to be his only consolation; the hope of
vengeance his only motive for living on, withholding him from
self-destruction? Can you not picture such a life, and can you not pity
and forgive much of the wreck that it may make of a man once virtuous
and honourable?"

Pleadingly he looked into the lad's face. It remained cold and unmoved.

"I understand," he continued brokenly, "that I am not such a man as any
lad might welcome for a father. But you who know what my life has been,
Jocelyn, you can surely find it in your heart to pity. I had naught
that was good or wholesome to live for, Jocelyn; naught to curb the evil
moods that sent me along evil ways to seek forgetfulness and reparation.

"But from to-night, Jocelyn, my life in you must find a new interest, a
new motive. I will abandon my old ways. For your sake, Jocelyn, I will
seek again to become what I was, and you shall have no cause to blush
for your father."

Still the lad stood silent.

"Jocelyn! My God, do I talk in vain?" cried the wretched man. "Have you
no heart, no pity, boy?"

At last the youth spoke. He was not moved. The agony of this strong man,
the broken pleading of one whom he had ever known arrogant and strong
had no power to touch his mean, selfis