"I'll soon get him well!" interposed Mrs. Wilson. "I'll go right down and bring up some breakfast." "I can eat it, mother. I have had nothing except the bread and milk Bert brought me." On Wednesday evening Bert closed his engagement with the farmer, and declined to continue it, though urged strongly to do so. He went home in a whirl of excitement, for Phineas Wilson had told him something which overwhelmed him with astonishment. CHAPTER XXIII. BERT FORMS A RESOLUTION. "Mother," said Bert abruptly, as he entered the cottage at the close of his engagement with the farmer, "when did father die?" Mrs. Barton sank into a chair, and looked searchingly in her son's face. "Why--do--you--ask?" she said slowly. "I have been told to-day that he was living only a year since." "Who told you?" "Phineas Wilson, the farmer's son." "Did he see him a year ago?" "Yes, in some town in Canada--near Toronto, I believe. But, mother, you don't seem surprised." "No, Bert, for I knew your father was living." "Then why don't he come home. Why don't he live with us? Is there some mystery?" "Yes, Bert, and a painful one for your unfortunate father. It is the fear of a prison that has kept him away from home." "Surely, mother," said Bert, painfully shocked, "my father was not a criminal?" "No, but circumstances made him appear such." "Tell me the story." "It is time that you heard it. Ten years ago your father and Albert Marlowe were employed by Weeks Brothers, large shoe manufacturers in a Massachusetts town. Both were skilled workmen----" "Did Squire Marlowe work at the bench?" "Yes, his position was precisely the same as your father's, no worse and no better. Both received the same pay--two dollars a day." "Does Percy know this?" "Probably not. Albert Marlowe is not fond of speaking of his early days when he was a common workman. At that time our families were intimate and associated on equal terms. Our circumstances and ways of living were the same. We lived in a double house, Albert occupying one tenement, we the other." "Were you and Mrs. Marlowe friendly then?"