f twenty-five years anything might happen. Still, he had a feeling
that his father was alive, and he owed it to his mother, he owed it to
himself, to penetrate the mystery. Why he should connect Mary Bolitho
with all this he did not know; nevertheless, it was a fact that her
face was never missing from the picture which he drew of the future.
Somehow she was always connected with the efforts he was making. Often
he dreamed of the time when he would be able to get her and say, "My
name is as honourable as yours, as free from stain as yours. I have
found my father." But the months went by and his search was
unavailing, and the questions he was constantly asking were never
answered.

He had never seen his mother since the day he left her on the Altarnun
Moors. More than once he had suggested that she should come and live
with him, but she had refused. Frequently, too, when writing to her,
he had asked her whether he might come and see her, but she had
persistently opposed this. "No, Paul," she said. "Your coming would
only lead to questions. Here I am allowed to bury my secret in my own
heart, and while my life is lonely enough, I can bear it until the day
when justice is done to me."

At length, however, Paul could bear it no longer.

"MOTHER (he wrote),--I am now what you would call a rich man. I have
more money than I need to spend, and I cannot bear that you should be
living away in that lonely farmhouse. You say you are treated more
like a housekeeper than a servant, more like a member of the family
than a stranger, but that's not enough for me. You are my mother, and,
although I know little of you, I love you dearly. Besides, I am very
lonely. I have but few friends, neither do I wish to make any, but I
want you to come to me, mother. If you can keep house for that farmer,
you can keep house for me. And I want to see you constantly. I want
you by my side. I want you to be here to bid me 'Good-morning' when I
go out to my work and welcome me when I come home at night. I want a
home of my own, and I want my mother to be at the head of it. You must
do this, mother. I have my eye now upon an old-fashioned house just
outside Brunford. It is hidden from the town, and was at one time, I
suppose, owned by a sort of yeoman. It has a large garden, and there
are old trees round it, and that, I can assure you, is something to be
desired here, in a town where there are few gardens and where the trees