He hung his head, as if cruelly abashed.
“You don’t know the man as I do,” he cried, in a low voice. “He is a devil—not a man.”
I was utterly shocked and astounded.
“Well,” I said at length. “I won’t ask you for your secret. To share it with any one would kill the zest, no doubt.”
He lifted his head with a thin wail.
I put my hand gently on his shoulder.
“Dad,” I said, “I must never leave you again.”
He seized my hand and kissed it.
“Harkee, Renalt,” he whispered. “Many are gone, but there are some left. Could I find out where the cameo is, we would take it, and what remains, and leave this hateful place—you and I—and bury ourselves in some beautiful city under the world, where none could find us, and live in peace and comfort to the end.”
“Peace can never be mine again, father. Would you like to know why? Would you like to know what has made a sorrowful, haunted man of me, while you were living on at the old mill here these five years past?”