father died in Canada,
nobody could remember just why, from what it will on one whose father
was sent to State's prison for taking money that didn't belong to him."

Matt flung up his arms; "Oh, the world, the world! I won't let the world
enter! I will never let Suzette face its mean and cruel prejudices. She
will come here to the farm with me, and we will live down the memory of
what she has innocently suffered, and we will let the world go its way."

"And don't you think the world will follow you here? Don't you suppose
it _is_ here, ready to welcome you home with all those prejudices you
hope you can shun? Every old gossip of the neighborhood will point
Suzette out, as the daughter of a man who is serving his term in jail
for fraud. The great world forgets, but this little world around you
here would remember it as long as either of you lived. No; the day you
marry Suzette Northwick, you must make up your mind to follow her father
into exile, or else to share his shame with her at home."

"I've made up my mind to share that shame at home. I never could ask her
to run from it."

"Then for pity's sake, let that miserable man alone, wherever he is. Or,
if you can get at him, beg him to stay away, and keep still till he
dies. Good-night."

Mrs. Hilary rose from her own chair, and stooped over Matt, where he had
sunk in his, and kissed his troubled forehead. He thought he had solved
one part of his problem; but her words showed him that he had not
rightly seen it in that light of love which had really hid it in
dazzling illusions.

The difficulty had not yielded, at all, when he met his father with it;
he thought it had only grown tougher and knottier; and he hardly knew
how to present it. His mother had not only promised not to speak to his
father of the affair, she had utterly refused to speak of it, and Matt
instantly perceived that the fact he announced was somehow far more
unexpected to his father than it had seemed to his mother.

But Hilary received it with a patience, a tenderness for his son, in all
his amazement, that touched Matt more keenly than any other fashion of
meeting it could have done. He asked if it were something that Matt had
done, or had merely made up his mind some time to do; and when Matt said
it was something he had done, his father was silent a moment. Then he
said, "I shall have to take some action about it."

"How, action?"

"Why, you must see, my dear boy, that as soon as this th