o. were fighting a
pretty uphill battle, which resulted, I need hardly add, in their total
rout. The case was dismissed. No, I doubt if ever I heard Hermiston
better inspired. He was literally rejoicing _in apicibus juris_."

Archie was able to endure no longer. He thrust his plate away and
interrupted the deliberate and insignificant stream of talk. "Here," he
said, "I have made a fool of myself, if I have not made something worse.
Do you judge between us--judge between a father and a son. I can speak
to you; it is not like ... I will tell you what I feel and what I mean
to do; and you shall be the judge," he repeated.

"I decline jurisdiction," said Glenalmond, with extreme seriousness.
"But, my dear boy, if it will do you any good to talk, and if it will
interest you at all to hear what I may choose to say when I have heard
you, I am quite at your command. Let an old man say it, for once, and
not need to blush: I love you like a son."

There came a sudden sharp sound in Archie's throat. "Ay," he cried, "and
there it is! Love! Like a son! And how do you think I love my father?"

"Quietly, quietly," says my lord.

"I will be very quiet," replied Archie. "And I will be baldly frank. I
do not love my father; I wonder sometimes if I do not hate him. There's
my shame; perhaps my sin; at least, and in the sight of God, not my
fault. How was I to love him? He has never spoken to me, never smiled
upon me; I do not think he ever touched me. You know the way he talks?
You do not talk so, yet you can sit and hear him without shuddering, and
I cannot. My soul is sick when he begins with it; I could smite him in
the mouth. And all that's nothing. I was at the trial of this Jopp. You
were not there, but you must have heard him often; the man's notorious
for it, for being--look at my position! he's my father and this is how I
have to speak of him--notorious for being a brute and cruel and a
coward. Lord Glenalmond, I give you my word, when I came out of that
Court, I longed to die--the shame of it was beyond my strength: but
I--I----" he rose from his seat and began to pace the room in a
disorder. "Well, who am I? A boy, who have never been tried, have never
done anything except this twopenny impotent folly with my father. But I
tell you, my lord, and I know myself, I am at least that kind of a
man--or that kind of a boy, if you prefer it--that I could die in
torments rather than that any one should suffer as that scoundrel
suf