"I wish you could have seen her, Drew, I've seen a good many, but none, no, not _one_, who ever came up to her for softness, and fetching ways. Lord! how I loved her. The old man might have known that if I could have gone straight I'd have done it for--mother. She never lost faith in me. Every time I went wrong--she just stopped singing for a time." Filmer gulped. "Then when I pulled myself together, after a while she'd begin again, singing as she went about, and smiling and laughing a laugh that keeps ringing, even now. "At last the governor got tired of the lapses. I don't blame him; just remember that. He thought if I went off and nibbled--what is it--husks? that I'd come around. He didn't understand that it was the _motive power_ that was lacking in me. "Good God, Drew! I've been hungry and cold and homesick until I've thought death was the next step; but I couldn't _stick_ to anything long enough to make good. Such men as my father never know what hell-suffering men like me go through--before they fall, and fall, and fall! "I wrote--lies, home. I wanted to keep mother singing and laughing. I was always doing fine, you know. Coming home in a year or so. I was in Chicago, then New York; but I was getting lower all the time. I put up in those haunted houses--the lodging dives, but I kept those letters going to her, always cheerful. "Then I made another struggle. I cut for the woods. I got to Hillcrest--when word came--that she had--died!" A dumb suffering stopped the words. Drew laid his hot hand over Filmer's, which were clenched, until the finger-tips were white. "It was the hope--of making myself fit to go home and hear her sing and laugh that had brought me to Hillcrest. Well, I wrote the old man--that I was going further north. You see, he blamed me. Said the longing for me, the disappointment and the rest, had weakened her heart. I couldn't bear the thought of ever going back--then; so I tramped over the hill and--St. Ange adopted me. It's been a tame plot since then, but it's never been as bad as it was before. I dropped into their speech and ways, and things sank to a dead level. I got word from Hillcrest the other day." Filmer looked blankly into the red embers. "The governor has left--it all to me with this saving clause: if I have any honour I am not to take the money until I can use it as my parents would desire. You see, the old man had what I never suspected--a soft place in his heart for me, and a glimmer of hope. It might not have made any difference--but I wish to God I had known it before." Drew could not stand the misery of the convulsed face. He turned his eyes away.