‘Because--it does not matter to anybody, least of all to me. I’ll go away to America, or somewhere, and take that poor wretch, that light-hearted wretch----’ ‘Oh, John, he is your father.’ ‘I know: can you say anything worse? are you trying what is the hardest thing you can say?’ ‘Oh, John!’ said poor Susie, and began to cry. Her confusion, and trouble, and anxiety, not unmixed with a little exasperation, too, were not to be expressed in any other way. He relented a little at the sight of her tears. ‘I think there’s no heart left in me,’ he said. ‘I make everybody that cares for me unhappy. You, out here in the street, and there, inside--Elly.’ ‘Elly!’ Susie’s astonishment was so great that she could not find another word to say. ‘_She_ does not cry,’ said poor John. ‘She has come to stand by us. She is braver than I am. She’s so innocent, Susie, she doesn’t know. If she knew better, if she knew the world, she wouldn’t come to me, a poor, shamed, and ruined man, a convict’s son.’ ‘Oh, John!’ There being no answer to make to this, Susie recurred to the former subject. He had still the telegram crushed in his hand. ‘That is not about ruin and shame,’ she said. ‘John, tell me, what does it say?’ ‘I scarcely know what it says,’ he answered, with an impatient sigh. And then suddenly, in a moment, by some strange miracle of the nerves and brain, he seemed to see the message glow out in big letters of flame quivering through the air, obliterating the shabby walls and long lines of the pavement, throwing a strange light upon everything--till they got inside his very soul, and obliterated everything else that was there. Words which were not divine, nor even very elevated that they should have moved him so. ‘_Scheme very promising, your presence indispensable._’ What did that mean? He knew very well what it meant--that all was not over, as he thought, that life and hope still remained. What did he care about such empty, impotent things? But so it was. All was not over, though he insisted within himself that it was so. The story of May and his little boy might, after all, be but a fairy-tale that had no sequence or meaning. And he was John Sandford, and the ball was at his foot once more.