n common honour, denies you, there's always a text
somewhere to oil your conscience."

"I've one, sir, on which I can rely--'Be just, and fear not.'"

"I'll test it. You'll have my money; on which you hardly dared to count,
eh? Be honest."

"Only on so much of it as is entailed, sir."

For a while John Rosewarne sat silent, with his eyes on the horizon.

"That," said he at length, "is just what you could not count on."
He turned and looked Sam squarely in the face. "You were born out of
wedlock, my son."

Sam's hand gripped the iron arm of the bench. The muscles of his face
scarcely moved, but its sallow tint changed, under his father's eyes, to a
sickly drab.

"Ay," pursued the old man, "I am sorry for you at this moment; but you
mustn't look for apologies and repentance and that sort of thing.
The fact is, I never could feel about it in that way. I was young and
fairly wild, and it happened. One doesn't think of possible injury to
someone who doesn't yet exist. But that, I grant you, doesn't make it any
the less an injury. Now what have you to say?"

"The sins of the fathers."--

"--Are visited on the children: quite so. Afterwards we did our best, and
married. No one knows; no one has ever guessed; and the proof would be
hard to trace. In case of accident, I give you Port Royal for a clue."

Sam rose and stood for a moment staring gloomily down on the gravel.
"Why did you tell me, then?" he broke out. "What need was there to tell?"

His father winced, for the first time. "I see your point. Why didn't I,
you ask, having played the game so far, play it out? Why couldn't I take
my secret with me into the last darkness, and be judged for it--my own
sole sin and complete? Well, but there's the blind child. By law the
house and home estate would he his. I might have kept silence, to be
sure, and let him be robbed; but somehow I couldn't. I've a conscience
somewhere, I suppose."

"Have you?" Sam flamed out, with sudden spirit. "A nice sort of
conscience it must be! I call it cowardice, this dragging me in to help
you compensate the child. Conscience? If you had one, you wouldn't be
shifting the responsibility on to mine."

"You are mistaken," said his father calmly. "And by the way, I advise you
not to take that tone with me. It may all be very proper under the
circumstances; but there's the simple fact that I won't stand it.
You're mistaken," he repeated. "I mean to settle the compe