Yet Dunstan's first interview with his father had not had all this quality of implacability. The boy's fever over, his limbs lightened of certain casts and the eyes deep and haunted, were things to meet which the older man had braced, things from which the Judge, with all his hardness, had shrunk; even the judicial habit could not overlook the danger the Judge had been in, of losing his son, the man who bore his name. With a curious sense of pride he, himself, could not understand, a perception of the absurd gallantry, the chivalry underlying the actions of a fool breaker of laws, the old man, his own prerogatives negatived, had fairly to screw up his courage to begin the interview as he determined it should be begun. "You know that you will have to meet the penalty," he rasped. The dark eyes met the gooseberry ones squarely. "Yes, sir, I've looked the thing up." "It is likely," said the Judge dryly, "that you will have to give up college and go into business, if indeed you are spared incarceration. The fine is very heavy; you are, in spite of bail, under arrest." At the word "incarceration" a swift gleam in Dunstan's eyes gave his father absurd hope. He was not injured, then--he was--all right--that was the old impudence, curse it. "I shall be glad," said the young fellow slowly, "to take any penalty that is rightfully mine, that would come to any man that did what I did, that had," the boy gulped a moment, "that had broken the law he lived _under_." "Ah," the old gray face, the hard-boiled eyes, looked watchfully upon the young face with its fierce pride--"then you realize that you were a fool, that you risked my name, your own honor, to save from just punishment a ruffian who had broken the law?" Something wild, desperate, leaped into the face on the pillows; it was a hurt, appealing look, different from Sard's fiery pride and steady intention; it was not so defiant, it was the more helpless and miserable, as who would say, "I am punished enough." The Judge's eyes on the thin young face at sight of this look felt a sudden strange pang. It reminded him of-- "We love Foddy--Foddy won't put us in prison with the naughty prisoners." Oh, little woman lips; oh, soft little hands and sweet voice; oh, hundred innocent tendernesses and faiths and needs---- The Judge stared at his son; the dark eyes closed and Dunstan lay there like death, only one long, thin hand clenched and unclenched on his chest.