She smiled. "It--was--all that I could do--for you--my son--the only way--I could--help. I do not--regret the cost. You will--not forget?"
"Never, mother, never."
"You promise--to--to regain that--which--your father--"
Solemnly the answer came,--in an agony of devotion and love,--"I promise--yes, mother, I promise."
A month later, the young man was traveling, as fast as modern steam and steel could carry him, toward the western edge of the continent.
He was flying from the city of his birth, as from a place accursed. He had set his face toward a new land--determined to work out, there, his promise--the promise that he did not, at the first, understand.
How he misunderstood,--how he attempted to use his inheritance to carry out what he first thought was his mother's wish,--and how he came at last to understand, is the story that I have to tell.