esence--as I feel it this moment--is worth all my
doctors."

"I think you know--I think I told you, I mean--that you are no stranger
to the position I stood in here. You never taught me, father, that
dependence was honorable. It was not amongst your lessons that a life
of inglorious idleness was becoming." As with a faltering and broken
utterance he spoke these words, his confusion grew greater and greater,
for he felt himself on the very verge of a theme that he dreaded to
touch; and at last, with a great effort, he said, "And besides all
this, I had no right to sacrifice another to my selfishness."

"I don't understand you, Charley."

"Maybe not, sir; but I am speaking of what I know for certain. But let
us not go back on these things."

"What are they? Speak out, boy," cried he, more eagerly.

"I see you are not aware of what I thought you knew. You do not seem to
know that May's affections are engaged,--that she has given her heart to
that young college man who was here long ago as Agincourt's tutor. They
have corresponded."

"Corresponded!"

"Yes, I know it all, and she will not deny it,--nor need she, from all
I can learn. He is a fine-hearted fellow, worthy of any girl's love.
Agincourt has told me some noble traits of him, and he deserves all his
good fortune."

"But to think that she should have contracted this engagement without
consulting me,--that she should have written to him--"

"I don't see how you can reproach her, a poor motherless girl. How could
she go to you with her heart full of sorrows and anxieties? She was
making no worldly compact in which she needed your knowledge of life to
guide her."

"It was treachery to us all!" cried the old man, bitterly, for now he
saw to what he owed his son's desertion of him.

"It was none to _me_; so much I will say, father. A stupid compact
would have bound her to her unhappiness, and this she had the courage to
resist."

"And it is for this I am to be forsaken in my old age!" exclaimed he,
in an accent of deep anguish. "I can never forgive her,--never!"

Charles sat down beside him, and, with his arm on the old man's
shoulder, talked to him long in words of truest affection. He recalled
to his mind the circumstances under which May Leslie first came amongst
them, the daughter of his oldest, dearest friend, intrusted to his care,
to become one day his own daughter, if she willed it.

"Would you coerce her to this? Would you profit by the authori