"Well, by George!" breathed the man dazedly, as he took the offered violin. The next moment he had demanded vehemently: "For Heaven's sake, who ARE you, boy?"

David's face wrinkled in grieved surprise.

"Why, I'm David. Don't you remember? I was here just the other day!"

"Yes, yes; but who taught you to play like that?"

"Father."

"'Father'!" The man echoed the word with a gesture of comic despair. "First Latin, then jiujitsu, and now the violin! Boy, who was your father?"

David lifted his head and frowned a little. He had been questioned so often, and so unsympathetically, about his father that he was beginning to resent it.

"He was daddy—just daddy; and I loved him dearly."

"But what was his name?"

"I don't know. We didn't seem to have a name like—like yours down here. Anyway, if we did, I didn't know what it was."