ung
chaps would have said that. A fine fellow, and she has lost him. Well,
the Almighty sends trouble to the young as well as the old. May I light
my pipe, Captain? For I am a bit shaky, and all this has overset me.'

Meanwhile Cyril was saying:

'We have not brought Mollie. If you wish to see her, she shall come
another time.'

'Thank you, my lad; that is kindly spoken. And I have a sort of longing
to set eyes on her again. But you need not think that I am going to
trouble her, or you either. A man like me has no right to trouble
anyone.'

How could they answer him? But Mat did not seem to notice their silence.
His eyes were bent on the ground, and he twirled his gray moustache
fiercely.

'My children belong to their mother, and not to me. I made you over to
her years ago. She said I was not fit to have the charge of my own
children; and maybe she was right. It was not a wifely speech, but I
can't blame her. When you go home, tell her I'll keep my word--that I'll
lay no sort of claim to any of you.'

He spoke in the slow, brooding tone that was natural to him, and the
tears came into Kester's eyes as he listened.

Boy as he was, he understood the deep degradation of such words. This
tall, hungry-eyed man, who stood aloof and talked so strangely, was his
own father, who was voluntarily denuding himself of a father's
rights--an outcast thrown over by his wife and children--an erring, and
yet a deeply repentant man. Could anything be more unnatural and
horrible? Kester's boyish sense of justice revolted against this painful
condition of things; he longed to start up and take his father's hand.

'Do not be so miserable; whatever you have done, you are our father, and
we will be good to you.' This is what he would have said; but he only
looked at Cyril and held his peace.

Cyril had felt himself strangely attracted from the first. This was not
the father whom he had dreaded to see, and on whose countenance he had
feared to behold the stamp of the felon. Mat's worn, gentle face and
deep-set, sorrowful eyes only inspired him with pity; the haggard
weariness, the utter despondency of the man before him told their own
story. True, there was weakness, moral weakness; but, at least, there
was no glorying in his wrong-doing. The prodigal had come home weary of
his husks, and craving for more wholesome food.

'If I have done wrong, I have suffered for it,' his looks seemed to say;
and Cyril's generosity responded to th