Through my mind there swiftly passed memory of the barren neglect of our younger lives; of all the evil and misery that had been the indirect result of so cowardly a nursing of an injury. I bowed my head, and said in a low voice: “I forgive you. That is all you must ask of me.” Perhaps, in the light of his later gentleness, he understood me, for suddenly the tears were running down his cheeks and he cried falteringly: “Out of the abyss of death a ghost rises and faces me! All this have I done for the son I love!” With the words he fell back from my arm and lay gasping on his pillow. And, though my father was near spent, and I knew it, I could find in my heart no word of justification of his conduct, no comfort but the assurance of my forgiveness. Oh, it is an evil thing to arrogate to ourselves God’s prerogative of judgment; to assume that in any personal wrong we can so disassociate justice and resentment as ever to be capable of pronouncing an impartial sentence. To return a blow in kind is a natural and wholesome impulse; but deliberate cruelty, following however great a provocation, can never be anything but most base and unmanly. And the sin had been sinned before she even knew my father! Yet, maybe, to a nature like his, that was the reverse of a palliation. To feel that he had never had her true love or duty, while lavishing his all of both on her; to feel that in a manner the veins of his own children ran with contamination--I could conceive these operating more fiercely in his mind than the discovery that some later caprice of fancy had lured her from her faith. It was all past and over and I would not condemn or even judge him. Though I had been one victim of his quarrel with life, what was my grievance in face of the awful prospect so immediately before him? In a few hours--moments, maybe--the call would come and his soul would have to submit itself for analysis in the theater of the skies. CHAPTER LVI. ALONE. About 4 of the afternoon my father, who had lain for some hours in a state bordering on stupor, and whose breathing had latterly become harsh and difficult, rose suddenly in his bed and called to me in a strong voice. I was by his side in a moment and lifted him up as he signified I should do. A mortal whiteness was in his face and I saw the end was approaching. “I have no fear,” he said, in a sort of sick ecstasy. “I can be true to myself at the last, thank God! The soul triumphs over the body.” He swayed in my arms, clutched at me and dragged himself erect again. “My brain--my brain! Something seems to swerve in it! Quick! Before it’s too late!” He held on to me. At the last moment the latent determination of his character trod weakness under and proved the soul masterful. With all his functions withering in the blighting breath of the destroyer, his spirit stood out fearless and courageous, a conqueror by its mere individuality.