“Yes, she's in them all,” he said. “Her weeping soul speaks out from every one. She has done those things in spite of the disgrace and misery that my cowardice has heaped upon her. What must she think of me--of me, whom she once placed upon such a pinnacle? Her own purity created the place for me in her heart which I once held, and from which her contempt has long since banished me. I've lost her. I owe her the world, and can pay her nothing--absolutely nothing!” His attention was attracted to the children on Weston's lawn. They were loudly laughing, shouting, and singing. He went to the window and looked out. “'King William was King James's son,'” they sang, as hand in hand they circled round on the grass. Galt's eyes rested only momentarily on the players. He was searching for some one else. Finally he espied the object of his quest. Lionel--his son, a full-blooded Galt, and, for aught he knew, the flower of the race--was hidden behind a tree peering out like a half-starved urchin at a window filled with sweets. He stood erect and motionless, as if hardly daring to breathe lest he be seen by his social superiors. “He is waking!” Galt exclaimed. “He is wondering and pondering. The time will come when he will understand and remember, perhaps, that I kissed him with the lips of Judas--I, who should have been his mainstay and supporter--kissed him as he lay in my arms, conscious of my love and ignorant of my weakness. No, I can't help him. Drawn to him as I am by every fibre of my being, still I must deny him. The man does not live who, in the same circumstances, could act otherwise. I haven't the moral backbone. I simply haven't.” Leaving the window, and sinking into a chair, Galt bent forward, locked his cold hands together, and wrung them as a man might in the agony of death. CHAPTER VIII |EVERYTHING is as merry as a marriage bell, and the goose hangs high!” Stephen Whipple quoted, with a hearty laugh, as he and Fred Walton sat on the old man's veranda after breakfast one Sunday morning. “And I'm a-thinking, my boy, that the suspended fowl is none other than our fellow citizen, J. B. Thorp. He is as mad as a wet hen. He had us plumb down, and, like the bully he is, was pounding the blood out of us with no thought of letting up. Then the rest of the hungry pack of wolves piled on top, and began to get in their work. I was so crazy I didn't know my hat from a hole in the ground. Then your keen young brain turned the trick, and here we are. Dick has got the dandiest retail store that ever saw the light in a Western town, and it is literally packed and jammed with customers.” “I am certainly glad it turned out as it did,” Fred replied. “It has been a great thing for Dick.” The merchant was silent for a moment, and Fred saw him twirling his heavy thumbs as he often did when embarrassed. Finally, after clearing his throat and rather awkwardly crossing his legs, he said: