How could they answer him? But Mat did not seem to notice their silence. His eyes were bent on the ground, and he twirled his gray moustache fiercely. 'My children belong to their mother, and not to me. I made you over to her years ago. She said I was not fit to have the charge of my own children; and maybe she was right. It was not a wifely speech, but I can't blame her. When you go home, tell her I'll keep my word--that I'll lay no sort of claim to any of you.' He spoke in the slow, brooding tone that was natural to him, and the tears came into Kester's eyes as he listened. Boy as he was, he understood the deep degradation of such words. This tall, hungry-eyed man, who stood aloof and talked so strangely, was his own father, who was voluntarily denuding himself of a father's rights--an outcast thrown over by his wife and children--an erring, and yet a deeply repentant man. Could anything be more unnatural and horrible? Kester's boyish sense of justice revolted against this painful condition of things; he longed to start up and take his father's hand. 'Do not be so miserable; whatever you have done, you are our father, and we will be good to you.' This is what he would have said; but he only looked at Cyril and held his peace. Cyril had felt himself strangely attracted from the first. This was not the father whom he had dreaded to see, and on whose countenance he had feared to behold the stamp of the felon. Mat's worn, gentle face and deep-set, sorrowful eyes only inspired him with pity; the haggard weariness, the utter despondency of the man before him told their own story. True, there was weakness, moral weakness; but, at least, there was no glorying in his wrong-doing. The prodigal had come home weary of his husks, and craving for more wholesome food. 'If I have done wrong, I have suffered for it,' his looks seemed to say; and Cyril's generosity responded to the appeal. 'We are all in a difficult position,' he said; 'but there is no need to make things worse than they are. It is not for us to judge our parents, neither is it our fault that all these years we have believed that we had but one. Now I know all, I feel you have not been treated fairly.' 'I thought you would have taken your mother's part, my boy,' replied Mat humbly. Cyril's words brought him some amount of consolation, only he could not quite bring himself to believe them. 'I hope that I shall always be on the side where the right lies,' was Cyril's answer. 'I do not wish to blame my mother. I think it is best and wisest to be silent. You are a stranger to us, and we have not even your memory to aid us. My own childish reminiscences are very vague: I can just remember a big man who used to play with us, and whom we called daddy; but I have no special recollection of him.'