"We are his parents, and are not likely to tell any thing that would disgrace our son."
"Promise her, father; no matter what it is, promise!" pleaded the mother, creeping round to her husband's side.
The old man hesitated. Katharine bent slowly toward the fire again.
"Promise," whispered the mother. "If our son is wrong, we shall never have the heart to speak of it. If he is innocent, no one but his own parents have had the cruelty to suspect him."
"I never thought wrong of him, never in my life," murmured Katharine, gazing into the fire; "that would kill me before those dark men had a chance."
"Well, girl, what promise shall I make?" questioned the old man, who had been listening to his wife with serious attention.
"Only that you will never mention the paper, nor what I tell you, till Nelson comes back."
"Well, I promise that."
"Yes; we promise," repeated the mother.
Katharine took a scrap of paper from her bosom, unfolded it with a loving touch, and gave it to the old man. There was no candle in the room, but his spectacles lay on the closed Bible, where he had left them on going to bed. He put them on, and knelt down by the fire, from which his wife forced a shower of sparks with the tongs. As the old man read the paper, she bent over him, and when his head fell forward and buried itself in his hands, her sobs mingled with the broken thanks that sprang from the father's heart.