"And Hester," he added slowly, "I prayed that I might bring this news to you because I am Alfred's father——"
"You are? Then it was true!" cried Hester, as if awakening from a dream. "But oh, why did not poor Alfred have all the good a father like you might have been to him? I thought these women who told me were only gossiping, but I even wished that it were true. Why did you ever lose hold of your son?" asked Hester, looking reproachfully on the worn, grey face.
So it happened, that for the second time that morning, David Morpeth, with aching heart, had to take up the tangled skein of the past. And Hester, as she listened, with her quick perception easily filled up the gaps in the narration.
"Oh, the loss to him!" she murmured. "If he had been brought up by one good and true like you he might have been different, instead of being embittered, reckless, mad."
In her turn, she had to unfold to the father the story of his son's crime and the fear of its consequences, which had driven him from his home, a fugitive from justice.
The father's grey head was bowed in grief. He sat in silence for some time, then looking up with a sob he said:
"If he had only come to me—even that night. I was his father—but he would have none of me."
"But how could he go to you—he did not know," faltered Hester.
"Ah, child, that is the worst sorrow of all—Alfred did know," said the truth-loving man, looking at Hester with his earnest eyes.
"Not that evening on the beach when he was so rude—so cruel? Oh, say he did not know then?"