"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 love--of honor--let the world say what it would. And he knew the truth at last: too late to look into those glassy eyes and read the secret of their long years of suffering love. "Father," Paul whispered, and fell to his knees by the deaf ear. Mrs. Ritson, strangely quiet, strangely calm, stepped to the opposite side of the bed, and placed one hand on the dead man's breast. "Paul," she said, "come here." He rose to his feet and walked to her side. "Lay your hand with mine, and pledge to me your solemn word never to speak of what you have heard to-night until that great day when we three shall stand together before the great white throne."