“No!” It was my father’s voice I heard, coming sternly from where he sat upright in his chair. “He will not come back here. He left this house of his own free will, left it in treachery and deceit. He has cast its dust from off his feet, and this is his home no more.”
My heart sank within me at these bitter words. But Patience pleaded for me still.
“Ah, but he will return, I know he will, and if he does you will forgive him, won’t you, Mr. Ford? After all he was but a boy when he ran away, too young to know what he was doing. How can we tell what suffering he has gone through since, how often he has repented of what he did, and longed to come back and be forgiven.”
Mr. Peter Walpole gave a groan.
“It is I was to blame, as much as the boy, come, brother Ford. Remember how I held out for that premium with him. Not but what the sum I named was just, mind you; but I loved the lad and would have taken him without a premium at all, rather than he should have gone wandering about the world, to be murdered by heathen men and cannibals.”
I cannot express how surprised and touched I was to hear Mr. Walpole speak thus of me. For I had ever regarded him as a cold, hard man, with no affections beyond money and religion. I looked anxiously for my father’s reply.
“Nay, you were in no wise to blame, if you considered that what you asked was your right, though to my mind it savoured of extortion. It is my unhappy son whom I cannot excuse. Had he but come to me, and told me what was in his heart, it would have gone hard but I would have provided for him in some honest career. But to let himself be enticed away by pirates, as there is little doubt they were, and to dissemble his flight with falsehood, that was unworthy of a son of mine, and cannot be atoned for.”
He gave a glance, half angry, half questioning, at my mother, as he concluded. I did the same, but was surprised to observe that her face was returned to its former placid composure, and she seemed not to heed my father’s stern expressions.
Poor little Patience took them more to heart, and the tears shone in her eyes.