'I want to marry your daughter, Mr. Lannithorne. We love each other very much. But--I haven't quite persuaded her, and I haven't persuaded Mrs. Lannithorne and my father at all. They don't see it. They say things--all sorts of dreadful things,' said the boy. 'You would think they had never been young and--cared for anybody. They seem to have forgotten what it means. They try to make us afraid--just plain afraid. How am I to suppose that they know best about Ruth and me?' Lannithorne looked across at the young man long and fixedly. Then a great kindliness came into his beaten face, and a great comprehension. Oliver, meeting his eyes, had a sudden sense of shelter, and felt his haunting fears allayed. It was absurd and incredible, but this man made him feel comfortable, yes, and eager to talk things over. 'They all said you would know. They sent me to you.' Peter Lannithorne smiled faintly to himself. He had not left his sense of humor behind him in the outside world. 'They sent you to me, did they, boy? And what did they tell you to ask me? They had different motives, I take it.' 'Rather! Ruth said you were the best man she had ever known, and if you said it was right for her to marry me, she would. Mrs. Lannithorne said I should ask you if you thought Ruth had a fighting chance for happiness with me. She doesn't want Ruth to marry anybody, you see. My father--my father'--Oliver's voice shook with his consciousness of the cruelty of what was to follow, but he forced himself to steadiness and got the words out--'said I was to ask you what a man wants in the family of the woman he marries. He said you knew what was what, and I should ask you what to do.' Lannithorne's face was very grave, and his troubled gaze sought the floor. Oliver, convicted of brutality and conscience-smitten, hurried on, 'And now that I've seen you, I want to ask you a few things for myself, Mr. Lannithorne. I--I believe you know.' The man looked up and held up an arresting hand. 'Let me clear the way for you a little,' he said. 'It was a hard thing for you to come and seek me out in this place. I like your coming. Most young men would have refused, or come in a different spirit. I want you to understand that if in Ruth's eyes, and my wife's, and your father's, my counsel has value, it is because they think I see things as they are. And that means, first of all, that I know myself for a man who committed a crime, and is paying the penalty. I am satisfied to be paying it. As I see justice, it is just. So, if I seem to wince at your necessary allusions to it, that is part of the price. I don't want you to feel that you are blundering or hurting me more than is necessary. You have got to lay the thing before me as it is.'