‘Falsehood—injustice,’ cried the tremulous tones of the old man; ‘falsehood and injustice from first to last. Because I was laborious, you would have it that I must needs be rich. Because I was careful, you put me down as a miser. I tried to build up a fortune for the future—Heaven knows how much more for your sake than for my own. You plotted against me, joined with your mother to deceive and cheat me, squandered in foolish dissipations the money which my care would have quadrupled: and for you, mind—all for you. I never acquired the art of spending money. I could make it, but I couldn’t spend it. The man who does the first rarely can do the second. You would have inherited everything. I told you that. Not once but many times. I tried to awaken your mind to the expectation of the future. I tried to teach you that by economy and some little self-denial in the present you could help me to lay the foundation of a fortune which should not be contemptible. You, with your consummate artifice, pretended to agree with me, and went on robbing me. This was before you were twelve years old.’ ‘The bent of my genius declared itself early,’ said the younger man, with a cynical monosyllabic laugh. The very note Lucius remembered in the log-hut. ‘You lied to me and you robbed me, but I still loved you,’ continued Homer Sivewright, suppressed passion audible in those faltering tones of age. ‘I still loved you—you were the only child that had been born to gladden my lonely heart. I was estranged from your mother, and knew too well that she had never loved me. What had I in the world but you? I made excuses for your wrongdoing. It is his mother’s influence, I said. What child will refuse to do what a mother bids him? She confuses his sense of right and wrong. To serve her he betrays me. I must get him away from his mother. On the heels of this came a hideous revelation from you. You had quarrelled with your mother—you had taken up a knife to use against her. It was time that I should part this tigress and her cub. I lost no time—spared no expense—gave you the best education that money could buy—I who wore a threadbare coat and grudged the price of a pair of boots, even when my bare feet had made acquaintance with the pavement. Education, and that of the highest kind, made no change in you. It gave you some varnish of manner, but it left you a thief and a liar. I need not pursue the story of your career.’ ‘The survey is somewhat tiresome, I admit, sir,’ said the prodigal, carelessly. ‘Suppose we come to the point without farther recrimination on either side. You have your catalogue of wrongs, your bill of indictment; I mine. Let us put one against the other, and consider the account balanced. I am ready to give you a full acquittance. You can hardly refuse the same favour to an only son, whom you once loved, who has passed through the purifying furnace of penury, who comes to you remorseful and yearning for forgiveness—nay, even for some token of affection.’