“Darling, he did it for my sake,” she whispered to her brother, though it cut through her heart to say it. “Father, oh father, Bob is so slow; donʼt be angry with him. Come to me a moment, father. Oh, how I love and honour you!” Those last few words to the passionate man were like heaven poured into hell. That a child of his should still honour him! He kissed her with tenfold the love young man has for maiden; then he turned away and wept, as if the earth was water. Very little more was said. Pearl went away to Bob, and whispered how the fatal grief befell; and Bob wept great tears for the sake of all, and most of all for his fatherʼs sake. Then, as the father lay cramped up upon the little sofa, wrestling with the power of life and the promise of death, Bob came up, and kissed him dearly on his rugged forehead. “Is that you, my own dear son? God is far too good to me.” CHAPTER XV. That night the man of violence enjoyed the first sweet dreamless sleep that had spread its velvet shield between him and his guilt and sorrow. Pearl, who had sat up late with Bob, comforting and crying with him, listened at her fatherʼs door, and heard his quiet breathing. Through many months of trouble, now, she had watched him kindly, tenderly, fearing ever some wild outbreak upon others or himself, hiding in her empty heart all its desolation. The very next day, Bull Garnet resolved to have it out with his son; not to surprise him by emotion to a hasty issue, but now to learn what he thought and felt, after taking his time about it. All this we need not try to tell, only so much as bears upon the staple of the story. “Father, I know that you had—you had good reason for doing it.” “There could be no good reason. There might be, and were, many bad ones. Of this I will not speak to you. I did it in violence and fury, and under a false impression. When I saw him, with his arm cast round my pure and darling Pearl, Satanʼs rage is but a smile compared to the fury of my heart. He had his gun, and I had mine; I had taken it to shoot a squirrel which meddled with our firework nonsense. I tore her from him before I could speak, thrust her aside, stepped back two paces, gave him ‘one, two, three,’ and fired. He had time to fire in self–defence, and his muzzle was at my head, and his finger on the trigger; but there it crooked, and he could not pull. Want of nerve, I suppose. I saw his finger shaking, and then I saw him fall. Now, my son, you know everything.” “Why, father, after all then, it was nothing worse than a duel. He had just the same chance of killing you, and would have done it, only you were too quick for him.”