hut always to
the sidelong looks, your ears never heard the things people said--'A
good-for-nothing ship-captain, a scamp and a ne'er-do-weel, one that had
a lass at every port, and, maybe, wives too; one that none knew or ever
had seen--a pirate maybe, or a slave-dealer, or a jail-bird, for all
they knew! Married--oh yes, married right enough, but nothing else--not
even a home. Just a ring on the finger, and then, beyond and away!'
Around her life that brought into the world our lad yonder you let a
cloud draw down; and you let it draw round his, too, for he didn't even
bear his father's name--much less knew who his father was--or live in
his father's home, or come by his own in the end. You gave the lad shame
and scandal. Do you think, he didn't feel it, was it much or little? He
wasn't walking in the sun, but--"

"Mercy! Mercy!" broke in the old man, his hand before his eyes. He was
thinking of Mercy, his daughter, of the words she had said to him when
she died, "Set him in the sun, father, where God can find him," and her
name now broke from his lips.

Soolsby misunderstood. "Ay, there'll be mercy when right's been done
Our Man, and not till then. I've held my tongue for half a lifetime, but
I'll speak now and bring him back. Ay, he shall come back and take
the place that is his, and all that belongs to him. That lordship
yonder--let him go out into the world and make his place as the Egyptian
did. He's had his chance to help Our Man, and he has only hurt, not
helped him. We've had enough of his second-best lordship and his ways."

The old man's face was painful in its stricken stillness now. He had
regained control of himself, his brain had recovered greatly from its
first suffusion of excitement.

"How does thee know my lord yonder has hurt and not helped him?" he
asked in an even voice, his lips tightening, however. "How does thee
know it surely?"

"From Kate Heaver, my lady's maid. My lady's illness--what was it?
Because she would help Our Man, and, out of his hatred, yonder second
son said that to her which no woman can bear that's a true woman; and
then, what with a chill and fever, she's been yonder ailing these weeks
past. She did what she could for him, and her husband did what he could
against him."

The old man settled back in his chair again. "Thee has kept silent all
these years? Thee has never told any that lives?"

"I gave my word to her that died--to our Egyptian's mother--that I would
never