“You must have been an unfortunate to have been in the prison,” said Katerin. She was still gazing at him with curious eyes, as if she could not believe that he was really telling the truth about himself—as if she thought he was making his story fit his necessity for finding Kirsakoff and was making it as serious as possible to induce them to help him.
“My father was an unfortunate—a political—here in the Valley of Despair.”
“Indeed, was he?” asked Michael, with renewed interest. “You mean that he was here in the time that Kirsakoff was Governor?”
“In the same time—when I was a boy,” said Peter, and looked at Katerin. Her face was full of shocked surprise. She seemed horror-stricken at the idea, and he wondered why she should think it so strange and so terrible. He rather expected that she would see that they would all be drawn together in common trouble, and have a common hatred for Kirsakoff.
“How strange,” she said, turning to the lamp. “Then you are one of us—no wonder you seek Kirsakoff.”
“Ay, that is a new string to the fiddle,” agreed Michael. “I can understand now that you should want to find the Governor. Perhaps you are right in this matter after all—and I must think it over. You have reason enough, yet it is a serious thing for me to put you in danger.”
Peter felt better at this new attitude of the old man, and thought that now they regarded him with a more friendly eye. He was, in truth, one of them, and there is a strong bond of sympathy between exiles and the children of exiles.
“And we might have known—could we have known your father?”
“You could not have known my father. He died here twenty years ago—before I went to America,” said Peter.
“Twenty years! That is a long time to wait for vengeance,” said Michael. “Many things are forgotten in twenty years, and time cures many things.”