"Yes—Israel Zuker."
"I haven't forgotten the name," said Hibbert, with a painful smile. "I'm not likely to forget it—never, never, never! For—for it happens to be my name."
"Hibbert!" cried Paul.
"My name. Israel Zuker, the man who spied upon your father, and whose life he saved at the risk of his own, was my father."
Paul staggered back, as though he had been smitten in the face. Hibbert the son of the German spy! Hibbert the son of Zuker! Impossible! He was wandering. The story he—Paul—had once told him about his own father, and the way he had lost him, had got on the boy's mind.
"Ah, you shrink from me! I don't wonder at it!" cried Hibbert. "Didn't I tell you what a hypocrite I was—how wicked?"
"No, no, Hibbert," answered Paul, taking again the hand he had let fall from him; "nothing you can say will ever make me shrink from you. But—but you have so surprised me. I cannot understand. Let me think for a moment—Israel Zuker your father. How can that be when your name is Hibbert?"
"That is a false name. I told you once that I knew of a boy of that name in Germany. I was speaking of myself, for I spent three years of my life at a school in Heidelberg before I came here."
"Then the man I saw this afternoon—the man who thanked me for saving the life of his son, was——"
"Israel Zuker, my father—the man whose life your father saved, as you, his son, have saved mine. Now can you understand what I have suffered, Percival, by having this terrible secret on my mind? When I heard your story that day you don't know what I felt—what a mean, contemptible cad. I felt that I was a spy on you, just as my father had been a spy on your father—a spy on you, who had been so good to me. Oh, it was terrible! And then you saved my life, just as your father had saved my father's years ago. And that was heaping coals of fire on my head. I couldn't endure it."