It is a hard matter when a child is frightened of its own father. It is yet harder when he makes it hate him. Ah, it is easy to say, That was wicked of thee. So it was: and I know it. But doth not sin lead to sin?--spring out of it, like branches from a stem, like leaves from a branch? And when one man's act of sin creates sin in another man, and that again in a third, whose is the sin--the black root, whereof came the rotten branches and the withered leaves? Are we not all our brothers' and our sisters' keepers? Well, it will not answer to pursue that road: for I know well I should trace up the sin too high, to one of whom it were not meet for me to speak in the same breath with ugly words. Ay me! what poor weak things we mortal creatures are! Little marvel, little marvel for the woe that was wrought!--so fair, so fair she was! She had the soul of a fiend with the face of an angel. Was it any wonder that men--ay, and some women--were beguiled with that angel face, and fancied but too rashly that the soul must be as sweet as it? God have mercy on all Christian souls! Verily, I myself, only this last spring-time, was ready to yield to the witch's spell--never was woman such enchantress as she!--and athwart all the past, despite all I knew, gazing on that face, even yet fairer than the faces of younger women, to think it possible that all the tales were false, and all the past a vision of the night, and that the lovely face and the sweet, soft voice covered a soul white as the saints in Heaven! And men are easier deluded by such dreams than women--or at least I think it. My poor father! If only he had never seen her that haled him to his undoing! he might, perchance, have been a better man. Any way, he paid the bill in his heart's blood. So here I leave him. God forgive us all! And now to my story. While I was but a little child, we saw little of our mother: little more, indeed, than we did of our father. I think, of the two, we oftener saw our grandmother. And little children, as God hath wisely ordered it, live in the present moment, and take no note of things around them which men and women see with half an eye. Now, looking back, I can recall events which then passed by me as of no import. It was so, and there was an end of it. But I can see now why it was so: and I know enough to guess the often sorrowful nature of that wherefore.