you shrink from me! I don't wonder at it!" cried Hibbert. "Didn't I
tell you what a hypocrite I was--how wicked?"

"No, no, Hibbert," answered Paul, taking again the hand he had let fall
from him; "nothing you can say will ever make me shrink from you.
But--but you have so surprised me. I cannot understand. Let me think for
a moment--Israel Zuker your father. How can that be when your name is
Hibbert?"

"That is a false name. I told you once that I knew of a boy of that name
in Germany. I was speaking of myself, for I spent three years of my life
at a school in Heidelberg before I came here."

"Then the man I saw this afternoon--the man who thanked me for saving
the life of his son, was----"

"Israel Zuker, my father--the man whose life your father saved, as you,
his son, have saved mine. Now can you understand what I have suffered,
Percival, by having this terrible secret on my mind? When I heard your
story that day you don't know what I felt--what a mean, contemptible
cad. I felt that I was a spy on you, just as my father had been a spy on
your father--a spy on you, who had been so good to me. Oh, it was
terrible! And then you saved my life, just as your father had saved my
father's years ago. And that was heaping coals of fire on my head. I
couldn't endure it."

He covered his face with his hands. He was choking back the sobs that
seemed of a sudden to convulse his frame.

"I shall really have to ring the bell and send for Mrs. Trounce," said
Paul firmly.

The threat had its desired effect. Hibbert uncovered his face; the sobs
died away in his throat. Then Paul put an arm round him, as he might
have done round a brother, and said, in a softer key:

"Look here, Hibbert--what your father may have done is no fault of
yours. God only judges us by what we do ourselves; and that's all I want
to judge you by. You've looked upon me as your friend; I want you to
look upon me as your friend still. Haven't I said that nothing you can
say will make me shrink from you?"

"How good, how noble you are, Percival!"

"Humbug! But listen to me--we're getting a little off the track. The
gentleman I was introduced to in the visitors' room this afternoon was
your father, Israel Zuker, you say?"

"Yes."

"Wearing a false beard, then?"

"Yes. But how did you know that? Have you met him before?" asked the boy
wonderingly.

Paul now understood what it was in the voice of the visitor that had
seemed familiar to him.

"I me