I made no answer, and for a minute we faced each other, while he shook his clenched fists at me, and the creature in him that had never yet been cast challenged all the universe.
"They're tryin' to tak my boy away from me," he roared, "and they cain't do it—I tell you they cain't. He's all what we got left, now."
"And so you mean to keep him for yourself?" I asked.
"Ay, that I do," he cried, jumping out of his chair, and striding up and down the room as if clean out of his wits. "I do! I do! Why wouldn't I mean to, hey? Ain't he mine? Who's got a better right to him?"
Of a sudden he comes to a dead halt in front of me, with his arms crossed. "Mister Biddles," he says, very bitterly, "you may well be thankfu' you never wast a father yoursel'. Nobody ain't for trying to tak nothink away from you."
"That's quite true, Renny," said I. "But remember," I said, not intending any irreverence, but uttering such poor words as were given to me in my extremity, "remember, Renny, it's to a Father you say your prayers in church every Sunday; and you needn't think as that Father doesn't know full as well as you what it is to give up an only Son for love's sake."
"Hey?—What's that, sor?" cries Renny, with a face right like a dead thing.
"And would He be asking of you for to let yours go, if He didn't know there was love enough in your heart to stand the test?"
Renny broke out with a terrible groan, like the roar of anguish of a wild beast that has got a mortal wound; and the same instant the savage look died in his eyes, and the bigger love in him had triumphed over the smaller love. I could see it, I knew it, even before he spoke. He caught at my hand, blunderingly, and gave it a twist like a winch.
"He shall go, sor. He shall go for all of I. And Mr. Biddles, while I'm for telling the old woman and the boy, would ye be so condescending as to say over some of them there prayers, so I could have the feeling, as you might say, that some one was keeping an eye on me? It'll all be done in less nor a half-hour."