"Pity? Pity for you? You who have brought your father to shame? He is the ruin of the man he was. You have impoverished him; you have spent his substance and wasted it. Ay, and you have made his gray head a mark for reproach. 'Set your own house in order'--that's what the world says to the man of God whose son is a child of the--" "Stop!" cried Dan. He had leapt to his feet, his fist clenched, his knuckles showing like nuts of steel. But Ewan went on, standing there with a face that was ashy white above his black coat. "Your heart is as dead as your honor. And that is not all, but you must outrage the honor of another." Now, when Ewan said this, Dan thought of his forged signature, and of the censure and suspension to which Ewan was thereby made liable. "Go away," Ewan cried again, motioning Dan off with his trembling hand. Dan lifted his eyes. "And what if I refuse?" he said in a resolute way. "Then take the consequences." "You mean the consequences of that--that--that forgery?" At this Ewan realized the thought in Dan's mind, and perceived that Dan conceived him capable of playing upon his fears by holding over his head the penalty of an offense which he had already taken upon himself. "God in heaven!" he thought, "and this is the pitiful creature whom I have all these years taken to my heart." "Is that what your loyalty comes to?" said Dan, and his lip curled. "Loyalty!" cried Ewan, in white wrath. "Loyalty, and you talk to me of loyalty--you who have outraged the honor of my sister--" "Mona!" "I have said it at last, though the word blisters my tongue. Go away from the island forever, and let me never see your face again." Dan rose to his feet with rigid limbs. He looked about him for a moment in a dazed silence, and put his hand to his forehead as if he had lost himself. "Do you believe _that_?" he said, in a slow whisper. "Don't deny it--don't let me know you for a liar as well," Ewan said, eagerly; and then added in another tone, "I have had her own confession." "Her confession?" "Yes, and the witness of another." "The witness of another!" Dan echoed Ewan's words in a vague, half-conscious way. Then, in a torrent of hot words that seemed to blister and sting the man who spoke them no less than the man who heard them, Ewan told all, and Dan listened like one in a stupor. There was silence, and then Ewan spoke again in a tone of agony. "Dan, there was a time when in spite of yourself I loved you--yes, though I'm ashamed to say it, for it was against God's own leading; still I loved you, Dan. But let us part forever now, and each go his own way, and perhaps, though we can never forget the wrong that you have done us, we may yet think more kindly of you, and time may help us to forgive--" But Dan had awakened from his stupor, and he flung aside.