her. She brought sunshine into this house, which was gloomy enough without her. She had no mother, no father, no friends, and you were her only protector. How have you fulfilled your duty towards her? Shall I answer for you? You have behaved like a tyrant, in whom all human feeling was deadened. When she strove to love you, you compelled her, by harsh words and cold looks and repellent acts, to hate you. She has good cause for her feelings towards you now, for you did your best to make every hour and every day of her life a misery to her. She told me herself that she was only happy out of the house; so that you did your work well. If you saw faults in her which no one else saw, and which had their birth in your own hard unfeeling nature, what right had you to torture her in the way you did? She was but a child, and you are an old man. Why could you not have dealt tenderly and gently by her? Ask my mother--ask Miss West--ask any of her friends--if there is anything in her character that might not be turned to good account? But you could not see it. Lightheartedness and an innocent flow of spirits are crimes in your eyes. You made her pay bitterly for the shelter you gave her; you have shown the generosity of your nature in its fullest light by making her say, after a long experience of you, that she would starve rather than enter your house again. When you told us the story of your life, you said you wished me to hear it because I might learn something from it. I have learnt something--but not the lesson you wished me to learn. I have learnt that such a life as yours, such a nature as yours, brings desolation upon every life and nature within its influence, and that it would be a happier fate for me to drop down dead this minute than live as you have lived, a torture to all around you.' 'Chris, Chris!' implored my mother, with streaming eyes, and with a gesture of entreaty towards uncle Bryan, who sat before me now, with his head bowed upon his hands. Remember, my dear child, remember!' 'Remember what, mother?' I cried pitilessly. 'That he has robbed me of all that can make life dear to me--of all that _is_ dear to me? You should ask me rather to forget when you point to him, whom I would teach a different lesson if he were not an old man, with one foot in the grave. Shall I remember that he has no belief in goodness here or hereafter--that he believes neither in God nor man? Will such remembrances as these plead in his favour? One thing I will and do remember--that I owe him money for the food he has given me and you. But I will pay him to the last farthing, so that nothing may remain between us but what I owe him for having brought misery into my life. That is a debt that can never be wiped out. And Jessie will pay him also; she told me she would. But for that resolve she would not, for a long time past, have eaten a meal at his expense. Are these the things you wish me to remember?'