“Jeff Aiken ain’t no uncle of yours.” Hank’s tone was patient. “He’s but the man who married your father’s sister. Shoved you off on him? When you and Mattie went there to visit—at her wish, son—you was well furnished with money, and I sent money regular. After the Lord took her, I sent money for your keep with Aiken for two years— And by that time—well—well—” He searched in the desk drawer, found a packet of letters, laid them beside him. “Them’s Mattie’s, son. I’ll leave you read them later. You’ll find in them if she thought she was cast off. Here’s some of Aiken’s, receipting for the money I sent for your board and schooling, telling me that you was doing well and wished to stay where you was at. And I’ve got another here, the one you wrote before you took and run away from him.... Poor little feller.” The yellowed sheet Pearse and Hilda read, sitting there side by side, was a child’s appeal to the father he still trusted to come and take him away from a home that had become intolerable. As Pearse looked from it into Hank’s face and back again, his own face went through many changes of emotion. “I felt pretty bad when I wrote that,” he said doubtfully. “I had no idea there was any money being sent for me. Uncle Jeff’s way was, when he’d come to a deadlock and licked me till he was afraid to lick any more, to start in on a tongue-lashing. He could hurt me worse that way than he could with a stick, and he knew it. He’d tell me that you and mother had separated when she left Texas, and that you said you never wanted to see my face again. Sometimes I didn’t believe him. After a while I did. I just wrote that letter on a chance, and because I was desperate.” “Yes. I know.” Hank nodded. “When I went back there—as I did—at the news that you had run away, I found how things had been. Aiken thought he was justified—if such a man can be said to think a-tall. Told me that your mother had spoiled you, and some one had to take holt and straighten you out. Admitted that he set in to break your will. Man of his sort gets that idea into his head about a child—he’ll go to any lengths. He held out my letters on you. Why, Harry, I wrote as regular as the time come, hoping all the while that you’d change your mind and want to come back to me. All I’d get in answer would be Jeff’s receipt for the money, and his statement that you was satisfied where you was and hadn’t seen fit to write. He still justifies himself—Aiken does—says he done it for your good.” “If I had only known.” Pearse was back in the bitterness of his boyhood struggle. “Or if I’d known,” said Hank. “But the first word I got was when you run away. It come to me late, by the hand of a rider that chanced to be passing and brought my mail. I was right in the middle of the fall roundup, but I dropped everything and struck straight for Missouri.” Hilda’s hand found Uncle Hank’s; Pearse already held her other. The three of them drew together.