e. Listen, Thomas. With the hand of death encircling my heart, I
speak, and if the story find you cold--But it will not. Your name is
Cadwalader, and it will not."

Constrained by passions such as he had never imagined even in dreams,
Thomas fell upon his knees. He could not listen otherwise. His father,
gasping for breath, fixed him with his hollow eyes, in which the last
flickering flames of life flared up in fitful brightness.

"Thomas"--the pause was brief--"you are not my only child."

"I know it," fell from Thomas's white lips. "I have a brother; his name
is Felix."

The father shook his head with a look suggestive of impatience.

"Not him! Not him!" he cried. "A sister! a sister, who died before you
were born--beautiful, good, with a voice like an angel's and a
heart--she should be standing by my side to-day, and she would have been
if--if he--but none of that. I have no breath to waste. Facts, facts,
just facts! Afterward may come emotions, hatred, denunciation, not now.
This is my story, Thomas.

"John Poindexter and I were friends. From boyhood we shared each other's
bed, food, and pleasures, and when he came to seek his fortune in
America I accompanied him. He was an able man, but cold. I was of an
affectionate nature, but without any business capacity. As proof of
this, in fifteen years he was rich, esteemed, the master of a fine
house, and the owner of half a dozen horses; while I was the same nobody
I had been at first, or would have been had not Providence given me two
beautiful children and blessed, or rather cursed, me with the friendship
of this prosperous man. When Felix was fourteen and Evelyn three years
older, their mother died. Soon after, the little money I had vanished in
an unfortunate enterprise, and life began to promise ill, both for
myself and for my growing children. John Poindexter, who was honest
enough then, or let me hope so, and who had no children of his own,
though he had been long married, offered to take one of mine to educate.
But I did not consent to this till the war of the rebellion broke out;
then I sent him both son and daughter, and went into the army. For four
years I fought for the flag, suffering all that a man can suffer and
live, and being at last released from Libby Prison, came home with a
heart full of gratitude and with every affection keyed up by a long
series of unspeakable experiences, to greet my son and clasp once more
within my wasted arms the idolized