"I feared this when I saw he was not with you. Tell me how it happened. It is not the first shrewd blow fate has dealt me."
Chatterton and Lilian would have turned away, but Maxwell beckoned them to remain.
"No. We have grown to be good friends, and I should like you to hear it, too," he said, looking toward Lilian. "There will be no cause for any one who knew my son to blush at this story. It will be a kindness if you hide nothing, Hilton."
Dane afterward wondered how he got through that recital. At the beginning speech seemed to fail him, but one listener's spirit infected him as he proceeded, and pride was mingled with the man's grief, for what he had seen in Bonita Castro's face he read in that of the owner of Culmeny. It was dark when he concluded:
"I can tell you nothing more, sir, and, though God knows it is the truth, it is useless to say that I would willingly have staked my own life on the chance of saving him."
Lilian appeared to be crying softly, and Chatterton troubled with something in his throat, for he coughed several times vigorously, but Maxwell held out his hand to Dane.
"I believe you would. You were his friend," he said, still with a startling quietness. "You did your best for my dead son, and no man dare blame you. It is a brave story, and I am not ashamed of his end. It was in accordance with the traditions of an unfortunate family. But you will excuse me. I am getting an old man and weaker in the fiber than I used to be."
He turned away, holding himself stiffly erect, and Chatterton laid a heavy grasp on Dane's shoulder.
"Well done, Hilton. If you had not chased that damned rascal to his death I'd have sent you back with another expedition to take up the hunt again. I am sorry for Culmeny. He was fonder of Carsluith than anything else under heaven, and you saw how he took the blow. Well, I won my own place, and went through the fire for it, but the brand Culmeny wears is what I could never attain to. They were alike, both of them, and it will be a long time before we find their equal. Perhaps I had better follow and try to comfort him."
It struck Dane that Thomas Chatterton, though not lacking in sympathy, would hardly make a tactful comforter, but he did not say so, and Lilian seemed content to let him go.