they belonged, and he sometimes felt that if
he and his sister were guiltless of their father's crime, they were, at
least, thieves and robbers, because of the silence upon which he himself
had insisted. More than once recently he had resolved to tell Grey, and
let him decide the matter, and it was upon this very thing he was
brooding, on the morning when his son was announced. Grey had reached
Allington the previous day, and found his mother there waiting to
receive him.

"I wanted your father to come with me, but he would not. He dislikes
Allington worse than I do, and mopes all day in his room just as his
father did. I wonder if there is any insanity in the family," she said
to Grey, who answered, cheerily:

"Not a bit of it, mother; and if there is Bessie's advent among us will
exorcise the demon. I am going to Boston to-morrow to see father, and
shall bring him back with me a different man entirely."

He found his father in his room, moping, as his mother had said, and was
struck with the change in him, even during the few months he had been
away. He stooped more than ever, and there was in his whole appearance
an air of weakness and brokenness of spirit pitiable to see in a man who
had once been so proud and strong.

"Grey, my boy, how are you? I am glad to see you, very glad," he said,
as his son entered the room; and when Grey sat down by him, and taking
his thin, white hand, pressed it gently and said, "Poor father, you are
not well, are you?" he did a most astonishing thing. He laid his head on
his son's arm and sobbed aloud:

"No, Grey, I am sick--in mind, not in body--and I have been sick
these--how old are you, Grey?"

"Twenty-six, my next birthday," Grey replied, and he continued:

"Yes, you were fourteen when your grandfather died. Twelve years ago,
and for twelve years I have been sick--very sick. Oh, Grey, if I dared
to tell you, and ask you what to do!"

"You need not tell me," Grey said to him. "I know what you mean, and
have known it ever since grandpa died, for I was there that night,
unknown to you or any one; was in the kitchen by the stove, and heard
what grandpa told you. Don't you remember how sick I was after it? Well,
that was what ailed me. Aunt Hannah knows. I told her, and together we
have tried to find his heirs, and, father, we _have_ found them, or
_her_, for there is but one direct heir of his sister Elizabeth, and
that--and that--is Bessie, my wife. Oh, father, look up, bear