"Oh, if I could only go to him!" he repeated to himself--"if I only could!" He did not know why it was, but he felt a change coming over him. He realised that he had a wondrous interest in this man whom he pictured lying in Strangeways Gaol. He knew that the anger and scorn which he had felt for him were passing away. A kinder feeling was coming into his heart. It seemed as though old bitternesses were being removed, and he began to long with a great longing to do something. The young girl whom he had met as a boy, and who was Paul's mother, was for the moment forgotten. That stormy interview did not possess his mind at all, only in so far as she had revealed to him the relationship between him and the prisoner. Then, suddenly, it seemed to him as though the barriers around his heart were broken down. He loved, as he never realised that he could love, the prisoner who lay waiting for the next day's trial. He wanted to go to him with words of comfort. He wanted to kneel before him and beseech his forgiveness. He wanted to tell him that all the strength of his being were given to him. It seemed to him as though he had become a new man, capable of new feelings, realising new emotions. His knowledge had swallowed up everything else. He no longer regarded the prisoner as a case, or even as one with whom he had had associations in the past. He was everything to him--his son, his only son! But he could not go to him. Even the warders would not allow him. They knew their duty too well for that. He was the judge and Paul was the prisoner. But, oh! how his heart went out to him! How he longed to go to him! "I wonder what he would say to me if I went to him, supposing I defied all law and all usage?" he asked himself. "Supposing I found my way into his cell, what would he say on seeing me? What would he do?" And then into Judge Bolitho's heart came a great, haunting fear. He knew that his son must hate him, even as Jean hated him. Paul had heard her side of the story. He knew only of his mother's wrongs, her years of loneliness, the unworthy betrayal! The punishment seemed almost too hard for him to bear. Whatever Paul had suffered, whatever his mother had suffered, Judge Bolitho was sure that neither of them suffered as he did at that moment.