“I have something to say to you as between man and man.” The son stood back, and leaned against the trunk of an apple-tree. “You have given me the chance, John, to judge myself, and to discover the truth with my own eyes. Let us have no parson’s talk—no snivelling. As a man of the world I fought for myself, and pushed others out of the path. I blundered immortally over my selfishness, John, and they ought to hang me for a fool.” He still looked toward the tower, and John Gore guessed whither his thoughts tended. “That was the damnedest thing the self in me ever rushed on, my son. And yet I tried to alter it at the last—perhaps for my own sake, perhaps for the mother’s. She was dying then—I have told you that; perhaps that was why I repented. The heart of a man is a strange, elusive, treacherous thing, even to its owner, John. Sometimes we can hardly decide why we do the things we do.” He sat in silence awhile, with his head bowed down. “You must have hated me, my son; if you had spat upon me, I should hardly have questioned it. Words are not life: I cannot give you back that which I destroyed. And there is where bitterness grips the heart in a man when he sees what manner of ruin he has made. What are regrets, despair, protestations? Air—mere air in the brain! When once a man has fallen into the slough, John, his struggles seem only to carry him deeper. He may even drag others below the surface or splash foul mud onto innocent faces. But the awe and the bitterness are in the knowledge, John, of our own utter, miserable impotence. Things cannot be wiped out. They last and endure against us till the crack of doom.” He stared at the grass and knitted his hands together. “I had thought of giving myself up, my son, and telling the whole truth. But that—that cannot help the dead. And somehow I have come to shudder at the thought of throwing shame into the grave of the one woman who really loved me. And, John, I shall suffer more by living than by dying. Fools do not always realize that in this world. They tie a man to a rope, and think that they are even with him for his sins. They would often get the greater vengeance on him if they only let him live.” He paused, staring straight before him, his shoulders bent. “Weeks ago, John, I remember, as in a dream, that I lived in a mad horror of death. That has passed, I know not quite how. But I leave the judgment in your hands, my son. Do with me what you please.” He seemed to grow very weary of a sudden, for his strength was but the strength of a sick man, and the grim truths of life seemed heavy on him. His son went to him, and, putting an arm about his father’s body, helped him to his feet, and led him back to the bed in the kitchen. “I am not your judge, father,” he said, very gently; “there is another one who should judge, and from whom forgiveness may have come.” He was thinking of Barbara, but my lord thought that he spoke of God.