e--I received your letter right enough, and it sounds
too good to be true. Only "--and into the man's eyes there crept a
sudden cunning--"I don't understand what you want of me."

"You may think it much or little; but all we want--or, rather, all my
boy wants--is your blessing."

"So I gathered; and that's funny, by God! _My_ blessing--mine--and
here!" He flung out a hand. "I've had some strange requests in my
time; but, damn me, if I reckoned that any man any longer wanted my
blessing."

"My son does, though; and even such a blessing as your own son would
need, if you had one. You understand?"--for the prisoner's eyes had
wandered to the barred window--"I mean the blessing of Theodore the
First."

"You are a strange fellow, John Constantine," was the answer, in a
weary, almost pettish tone. "God knows I have more reason to be
grateful to you than to any man alive--"

"But you find it hard? Then give it over. You may do it with the
lighter heart since gratitude from you would be offensive to me."

"If you played for this--worthless prize as it is--from the
beginning--"

Again my father took him up; and, this time, sternly. "You know
perfectly well that I never played for this from the beginning; nor
had ever dreamed of it while there was a chance that you--or _she_--
might leave a child. I will trouble you--" My father checked
himself. "Your pardon, I am speaking roughly. I will beg you, sire,
to remember first, that you claimed and received my poor help while
there was yet a likelihood of your having children, before your wife
left you, and a good year before I myself married or dreamed of
marrying. I will beg you further to remember that no payment of what
you owed to me was ever enforced, and that the creditors who sent you
and have kept you here are commercial persons with whom I had nothing
to do; whose names until the other day were strange to me. _Now_ I
will admit that I play for a kingdom."

"You really think it worth while?" The prisoner, who had stood all
this time blinking at the window, his hands in the pockets of his
dirty dressing-gown, turned again to question him.

"I do."

"But listen a moment. I have had too many favours from you, and I
don't want another under false pretences. You may call it a too-late
repentance, but the fact remains that I don't. Liberty?"--he
stretched out both gaunt arms, far beyond the sleeves of his gown,
till they seemed to measure the room an