itson raised her hands to her face, and turned aside. Paul stepped
up to her and kissed her forehead reverently.

"You are right," he said. "Forgive me--I thought only of myself. The
world that loves to tarnish a pure name would like to gloat over your
sorrow. That it shall never! Man's law may have been outraged, but God's
law is still inviolate. Whatever my birth, I am as much your son in the
light of Heaven as Jacob was the son of Isaac, or David of Jesse. Come,
let us go to him--he may yet live to acknowledge me."

It had been a terrible moment, but it was past. To live to manhood in
ignorance of the dishonor of his birth, and then to learn the truth
under the shadow of death--this had been a tragic experience. The love
he had borne his father--the reverence he had learned at his mother's
knee--to what bitter test had they been put! Had all the past been but
as the marble image of a happy life! Was all the future shattered before
him! Pshaw! he was the unconscious slave of a superstition--a phantasm,
a gingerbread superstition!

And a mightier touch awoke his sensibilities--the touch of nature.
Before God at that moment he was his father's son. If the world, or the
world's law, said otherwise, then they were of the devil, and deserving
to be damned. What rite, what jabbering ceremony, what priestly
ordinance, what legal mummery, stood between him and his claim to his
father's name?

Paul took in love the hand of his mother. "Let us go in to him," he
repeated, and together they walked across the room.

The outer door was flung open, and Greta entered, flushed and with
wide-open eyes. At the same instant the inner door swung noiselessly
back, and Hugh Ritson stood on the threshold. Greta was about to speak,
but Hugh motioned her to silence. His face was pale, his hand trembled.
"Too late," he said, huskily; "he is dead!"

Greta sunk on to the settle in the window recess. Hugh walked to the
hearth and paused with rigid features before the haunting mirror.

Paul stood for a moment hand in hand with his mother, motionless,
speechless, cold at his heart. Then he hurried into the inner room. Mrs.
Ritson followed him, closing the door behind him.

The little oak-bound room was dusky; the lamp that burned low was
shaded. Across the bed lay Allan Ritson, in his habit as he lived. But
his lips were white and cold.

Paul stood and looked down. There lay his father--his father still! His
father by right of nature--of l