‘There are anomalies in nature,’ answered Sivewright. ‘I believe I was born without a conscience, or wore it out before I was ten years old. After all I have only sinned against my fellow man when I was desperate; it has been my ultimate expedient. I have not injured anybody upon fanciful grounds, for revenge or jealousy, or any of those incendiary passions which have urged some men to destroy their kind. I have obeyed the stern law of necessity.’ ‘Father, repent; life is ebbing. Have you no words but those of mockery?’ She took his death-cold hands, trying to fold them in prayer. He looked at her, and the cynic’s smile faded. There was even some touch of tenderness in his look. ‘Do you think the God against whom I have shut my mind is very likely to take pity upon me now, at my last gasp, when further sin is impossible?’ ‘There is no state too desperate for the hope of His mercy. Christ died for sinners. The penitent thief had briefest time for repentance, none for atonement.’ ‘I wonder whether he had been doing evil all his life; had never done a good action, never truly served a friend,’ murmured Sivewright in a musing tone. ‘We only know that he had sinned, and was forgiven.’ ‘Ah, that’s a slight ground for belief in illimitable mercy. Can you forgive me, Lucille—you whom I wronged and deluded, whom I cheated of a birthright?’ ‘I do not know what wrong you have done me; but whatever that wrong may be, Heaven knows how freely I forgive it. I loved you dearly once.’ ‘Ay, once. Poor parasite, why should you love me, except that it was in your nature to twine your tendrils about something? And I loved you, little one, as much as it was in _my_ nature to love anything. Whatever love I had, I divided between you and the fiddle I used to play to you in that dusky old parlour, when we two sat alone by the fire.’ ‘Father, by the memory of that time, when I knew not what sin was—when I thought you good and true, as you were kind—tell me that you repent your sins, that you are sorry for having tried to injure that poor old man.’ ‘Repent my sins—sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Well, I’ll say this much, that if I could begin life afresh, with a clean conscience and a fair start, I’d try to be an honest man. Outlaws have their pleasures; but I think respectability has the best of it in the longrun.’ ‘The strongest proof of repentance is the endeavour to atone,’ said Lucius, who dreaded lest the end should come ere he had learned all he wanted to know about Henry Glenlyne. ‘The wrong you did Lucille Glenlyne was a bitter one, for you robbed her of a father.’ ‘Lucille Glenlyne!’ cried Ferdinand. ‘How came you by the name of Glenlyne?’ ‘Never mind how I learned the name. Your time is short. Remember that, and if you can be the means of restoring Lucille to her father, lose not a moment ere you do that one good act.’