"Because he is _a coward!_ Answer me that question, girl, or never speak to me again while you live!" Robert Brand had apparently forgotten all his pain and risen from his chair, still holding his daughter's arm, as he hurled out the interrogation and the threat. Poor Elsie saw that he knew all, too surely; further dissembling was useless; and she dropped upon her knees, that iron grasp still upon her arm, lifted up both her hands, and piteously moaned-- "Yes, that is the reason! Oh, how did you hear it? Kill _me_, father, if you will, but do not kill poor Carlton! He cannot help it--indeed he cannot!" They were fearful words that immediately thereafter fell from the lips of Robert Brand--words that no provocation should ever tempt a father to utter, but words which have been plentifully showered on the heads of the shamed or the disobedient, by the thoughtless or the unmerciful, who arrogated to themselves God's power of judgment and retribution, through all the long ages. "Get up, girl, if you do not wish me to forget that you are not yourself the miserable hound for whom you are pleading!" "Oh, father!" broke again from the lips of the frightened girl, who did not move from her kneeling position. "Get up, I say, or I will strike you with this cane as I would a dog!" Elsie Brand staggered to her feet, she knew not how, but stood bowed before the stern judge in an attitude of pleading quite as humble and pitiful as that of prayer. The next words that fell upon her ears were not addressed to her, but seemed to be spoken for others' hearing than those who dwell in tenements of clay, while the voice that uttered them trembled in mingled grief and indignation, and the disabled frame shook as if it had been racked with palsy. "_My_ son a coward! a miserable poltroon to be pointed at, spat upon, and whipped! _My_ blood made a shame in the land, by the one whom I trusted to honor it! God's blackest and deepest curse--" "Oh, father! father!" broke in the young girl in a very wail of agony so pitiful that it must have moved any heart not calloused for the moment against all natural feeling, but that availed nothing to stop the impending curse or even to lower the voice that uttered it. "--God's deepest and blackest curse 'light upon the coward! shame, sorrow, and quick death! He shall have neither house, home nor family from this moment! I disown this bastard of my blood! I devote him to ruin and to perdition!"