at the sound of that pleading voice Adam's wrath turned in part
to tenderness, and he dropped back to the chair and began to weep.

"I am ashamed of my tears, child," he said; "but they are not shed
for myself. Nor did I come here for my own sake, though your mother
thinks I did. No, child, no; say no more. I'll repent me of nothing I
have said to her--no, not one word. She is a hard, a cruel woman;
but, thank heaven, I have my sons left to me yet. She is not flesh of
my flesh, though one with me in wedlock; but they are, they will
never see their father turned from the door."

At that instant three of the six Fairbrothers, Asher, Ross and
Thurstan, came in from the stackyard, with the smell of the
furze-rick upon them that they had been trimming for the cattle. And
Adam, without waiting to explain, cried in the fervor of his emotion,
"This is not your will, Asher?" Whereupon Asher, without any
salutation, answered him, "I don't know what you mean, sir," and
turned aside.

"He has damned your mother," said Mrs. Fairbrother, with her morning
apron to her eyes, "and cursed the day he married her."

"But she is turning me out of the house," said Adam. "This house--my
father's house."

"Ask her pardon, sir," Asher muttered, "and she will take you back."

"Her pardon! God in heaven!" Adam cried.

"You are an old man now, sir," said Thurstan.

"So I am; so I am," said Adam.

"And you are poor as well."

"That's true, Thurstan; that's true, though your brother forgets it."

"So you should not hold your head too high."

"What! Are you on her side, also? Asher, Thurstan, Ross, you are my
sons--would you see me turned out of the house?"

The three men hung their heads. "What mother says he must agree to,"
muttered Asher.

"But I gave you all I had," said Adam. "If I am old I am your father,
and if I am poor you know best who made me so."

"We are poor, too, sir; we have nothing, and we do not forget who is
to blame for it," Thurstan growled.

"You gave everything away from us," grumbled Ross; "and, because your
bargain is a rue bargain, you want us now to stand aback of you."

And Stean, and Jacob, and John coming in at that moment, Jacob said,
very slyly, with something like a sneer--

"Ah, yes, and who took the side of a stranger against his own
children? What of your good Michael Sunlocks now, sir? Is he longing
for you? Or have you never had the scribe of a line from him since he
turned his back on you