"How much do you know?" she inquired, in a hoarse voice.
"I know," said the old man, "that you left an unworthy husband and a happy child, to follow a stranger to a strange land."
"But you did not know," said Ada, still veiling her face, "you did not know how cruelly, how dreadfully I was treated; how I was left days and weeks together in hotels and boarding houses, without money, without friends, exposed to all sorts of temptation. You cannot know all the circumstances that combined to drive me mad. Still do not say I abandoned the child. Did I not send her to you? Did I not give her up when she was dear as the pulses of my own heart, rather than cast the stain of my example upon her? Oh, father, was this nothing?"
"We took the child, and strove to forget the mother," said the old man sadly.
"But could not—oh, you could not! This thought was the one anchor which kept me from utter shipwreck, you could not curse an only child—wicked, erring, cruel though she was!"
"No, we did not curse her—we had no power to forget."
"I came back—Jacob Strong will bear me witness—I lost no time in searching for you at the homestead. Strangers were there. Had we met then—had I found the old place as it was—you, my mother, my daughter there—how different all this might have been!"
"God disposes all things," muttered the prisoner. "We left our home when disgrace fell upon us. We who had been sinfully proud of you, Ada, went forth burdened by your shame to hide ourselves among strangers; we could not look our old neighbors in the face, and so left them and gave up the name our child had disgraced."
"Father—father, spare me—I am wretched—I am punished—spare me, spare me!"
"Ada," said the old man solemnly, "do you heartily repent and forsake your sin?"