we could, so that he'd have at least one bright thing to look back on
afterward. He was nothing to any of us. Except that he was a child
crippled and maimed and fore-damned for life in the worst way any
Unfortunate could be. We pitied him and we loved him. Did he ever hear a
harsh word or see a forbidding face? Yes; he did. From one person alone.
From _you_, his father. Even last night when he crept downstairs parched
with thirst, and begged you for a drink of water----"

"Don't!" cried Frederik, in sharp agony. "Do you suppose you can tell
_me_ anything about that? Do you suppose I haven't gone over it
all--yes, and over all the three years--a hundred times since I heard
he was dead? Do you think you can make me feel it any more damnably than
I do? If so, go ahead and try. You spoke of the need for a hell. You can
spare your advice to the Almighty. He has made one. And I can't even
wait until I'm dead before I walk through it."

"Through it," assented McPherson sardonically. "_Through_ it with many a
lamentable groan and a beating of the breast, and with squeaky little
wails of remorse--and on _through_ it, out onto the pleasant slopes of
forgetfulness and new mischief. Take my condolences on your fearful
passage through your purgatory. I fear me it will take you the best part
of a week to pass entirely out of it. It's only a man-built hell, that
of yours. And, according to the modern theologians, God has no worse one
for you later on."

With twitching, pallid face, and anguished eyes, Frederik Grimm looked
dumbly at his tormentor. Even in his agony, he felt, subconsciously, far
down in his atrophied soul, that the doctor's forecast as to the
duration of his remorse's torture was little exaggerated.

Yet, for the moment, his "man-built hell" was grilling and racking the
stricken penitent to a point that the Spanish Inquisition's ingenuity
could never have devised.

McPherson, with a sombre satisfaction, noted the younger man's misery.
Then a wistful look flitted across his gnarled, bearded face.

"I wonder," he mused, his angry voice sinking to a rumble, "I wonder if
you can guess--and of course you can't--what a prize you spent eight
years in throwing away. You had a son. And you disowned him and turned
your back on him. I've had no son. I shall never have a son. And when I
go out into the dark, there'll be no man-child to carry on my name. No
lad to inherit this brute body of mine with all its strength and gia