He had spoken with a gentleness he had never used to any being before. His father’s helplessness had disarmed any lingering resentment; he faced a sadly decrepit old man in whom there was no spark of hope. Why had their lives been so irreconcilably at variance? In the Virginia hills and at Denbeigh he had thought much of this. Jean had helped him; Paddock and Stoddard had lifted and urged him on; to Walsh and Wingfield he was under definite obligations; and Joe--even Joe--had made sacrifices for him; but his father had never dealt with him as an individual, but rather as a type. Even in his childhood they had never met on any common ground. He had never been conscious of a father’s faith or sympathy. His father, with his head in the clouds, had merely stumbled in annoyance over his son’s playthings. But he realized now that life nobly lived is not an affair of reprisal and vengeance, or even of measured reciprocity. What he had missed through his father’s vanity and selfishness was nothing when weighed against this new experience of the joy of giving and serving. He put into his father’s hands the little bundle of notes he had gathered up at the banks, with the cancellation marks stamped upon them. Roger Craighill gazed at them dully. His mind did not at once comprehend what it was that his son had done. “That is all there is of that, but there is something else I have to say. You are my father. I have used you ill; I have brought shame upon you, and in my bitterness against you I have sought to injure you--in infamous ways that I won’t describe. The night old Gregory died here----” Colonel Craighill lifted his head quickly and raised his hand in quite his old authoritative manner. “It was his heart--the autopsy showed it had been diseased for years. I insisted on the most careful examination!” “I dare say. I didn’t come to discuss that. That is your affair. What I have to say concerns me alone. When I offered that night to take whatever blame might follow his death here, it was from no good feelings toward you, but in a spirit of evil. I wanted to place you under a crushing weight of shameful obligation to me--that was it. And I’ve come back to say that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for every hour of anxiety and shame I ever gave you. Come, father, let us be friends!” Roger Craighill was slow to comprehend what had happened. He tried to get upon his feet, and Wayne caught him and lifted him up, his arm round his father’s shoulders, and it was he who gave the handclasp, vigorous and strong with the strength of his redeemed manhood. He had gone low, but he had risen high. He who had been of the companionship of dragons had come into possession of his own soul. He had still his weaknesses, and he might yet stumble and fall; but for an instant he stood above the clouds, master of himself and drinking deep of clean airs of hope and aspiration. CHAPTER XXXVIII “THEY’RE CALLIN’ STRIKES ON ME”