But with all his success, and with the happiness which is about to come, one great cloud remains on John Sandford’s life, a fear which sometimes takes his breath away and makes his heart sick, the fear that some day when he suspects nothing, some sweet day--it might be his marriage morning, it might be any happy anniversary--there will suddenly appear round a corner a stumbling, shambling figure, never without a certain attractiveness even in its degradation, a sort of charm of careless innocence in the midst of guilt. Sometimes when he goes through the works with perhaps a little elation in the greatness of his undertaking and the consciousness of the crowd which looks up to him as master, surrounding him with that veiled obsequiousness which makes the head of great industrial enterprises like a little king--the sight of some shadow in the distance will take all the strength and courage out of him. ‘There is no telling when the fancy may take me.’ These words come back to his ears with a meaning far more than was ever intended. But as a matter of fact there is cause enough to fear. For May never meant anything steadily or for long all his life. And when the fun to which he looked forward is exhausted--which is a thing that soon happens on the shady side of life--who can tell that the fancy may not take him to bring the remnants of his worn-out existence home? Poor wretch, for whom love and honour do not exist, but only fear and pity! the good man, the prosperous and happy, who has deserved his prosperity, as well as the other deserved his misery, is still the Son of His Father, and still bound for ever in this world at least, wretchedness to well-being, honour to shame. There is, however, one way in which this piece of personal history may be safely made to end like a fairy-tale. Susie and her curate went home to their new parish like a pair of doves to their nest. And these two lived happy ever after, if ever any pair did so in this troubled yet not always miserable world. THE END. LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Son of His Father; vol. 3/3, by Margaret Oliphant