ed it after the chaplain had added, at the
dying lad's request, an expression of deep contrition for his misdeed
and a prayer to me for forgiveness of the wrong which he had done me.
The two letters were sad reading, for they had been penned by
heart-broken people who had not only lost their only son, but had
learned, at the very moment of their loss, that all their pride in him
had been misplaced, and that he had been guilty of a deliberate,
despicable, cruel crime. Their shame and sorrow were patent in every
sentence of the letters, indeed they made no effort to conceal them, and
they finished up by saying that, Bob being gone from them, and gone so
tragically, they hoped I would forgive them for any hard thoughts they
may have had of me, and would be a son to them in place of the one they
had lost. They further begged that, my innocence now being established,
I would lose no time in hastening home to them, to comfort them in their
bitter bereavement, and to take steps to procure my reinstatement in the
British Navy, which, they had been informed, might probably be
accomplished without much difficulty under the circumstances.

The letter from Sir Robert Gordon was also chiefly in reference to Bob's
death, the particulars of which, and of his confession, he had learned
from his son Ronald. He also was of opinion that, in view of Bob's
confession, it ought not to be very difficult to secure the cancellation
of my expulsion, whenever I might choose to return to England. But he
said no word suggesting that I should return at once; on the contrary,
he offered his own and Lady Gordon's very hearty congratulations upon
the frequency with which my name had been mentioned in the papers as
having been specially referred to by Togo in his dispatches, and they
both expressed the hope that before the end of the war I should have
many further opportunities to distinguish myself.

The letters from my aunt and uncle moved me profoundly; their grief for
the loss of their only son, and, even more, their shattered faith in
him, was pathetic in the extreme, while it was easy to see how
yearningly their hearts turned to me for comfort and consolation in
their bitter bereavement. They were smarting with shame at the thought
that it was _their_ son, the lad of whom they had been so proud and upon
whose future they had built such high hopes, who was the author of my
undeserved disgrace and ruin, so far as my career in the British Navy