"If your lordship will just think a moment," said Paul. "You have asked me to try and understand you; will you try and understand me? I am here in a prison cell, accused of murder. Possibly I shall be hanged--although I mean to fight for my life," this he added grimly, with set teeth and flashing eyes. "I am twenty-five years of age, and it is not pleasant to think that one's life shall end in such a way! Let me remind you of something, Mr. Justice Bolitho, and, in reminding you of it, perhaps you will see that I have no reason to play the part of the yielding and affectionate son. I was born in a workhouse. My only name has been the name given to me because my mother was found lying near a little hamlet called Stepaside. I was educated a pauper. The parish paid the expenses of my learning a trade. When I was seventeen my mother told me the story of her life, told me of my father's villainy. What such a story would do for most men I don't know, but this it did for me: it robbed me of everything most dear. It killed in me all faith. It destroyed in me all belief in God and Providence. When I went out into the world it seemed to me that the only legacy I had was a legacy of hatred for the man who had robbed my mother of her youth and of her honour, and me of my boyhood and of all the things that make youth beautiful. I need not tell you my story since. You know it too well. But, if I am hard and bitter, you have made me what I am. Consciously or unconsciously, yours has been the hand that has moulded me. Do you wonder, then, that I cannot respond to this appeal for filial affection--that I cannot clasp my arms round your neck like a hero in a fourth-rate melodrama? When you rob a man of his faith in human nature and God, you rob him of everything, you dry up the fountains of tenderness." For a moment there was a silence between them, and then Paul went on: "But where's my mother now? You say you saw her last night. What did she tell you? What did you tell her? Do you know what has become of her?" "I scarcely know what I did tell her," replied the judge. "I was so overwhelmed when she told me that you were my son that I was scarcely capable of thinking. Besides, she seemed in no humour for asking questions. She felt very bitterly towards me, naturally, and my mind was numbed; I could not think." "Perhaps you will tell _me_?" said Paul presently. "I will tell you everything that you ask, my boy." "Then tell me why you masqueraded in Scotland under a false name? Tell me why you left my mother on the day you married her." "Douglas Graham was my name," he replied. "I had no thought of masquerading." "Then why have you become Bolitho?" asked Paul. "My mother told me that on the night of your wedding day you read a letter which had been given to you which seemed to surprise you very much. Tell me the meaning of it."