"Terry!"
"Yes, all the Colby pictures that I've been collecting for the past fifteen years. I burned 'em. They don't mean anything to anyone else, and certainly they have ceased to mean anything to me. But when I came to Anthony Colby—the eighteen-twelve man, you know, the one who has always been my hero—it went pretty hard. I felt as if—I were burning my own personality. As a matter of fact, in the last couple of hours I've been born over again."
Terry paused. "And births are painful, Aunt Elizabeth!"
At that she cried out and caught his hand. "Terry dear! Terry dear! You break my heart!"
"I don't mean to. You mustn't think that I'm pitying myself. But I want to know the real name of my father. He must have had some name other than Black Jack. What was it?"
"Are you going to gather his memory to your heart, Terry?"
"I am going to find something about him that I can be proud of. Blood will tell. I know that I'm not all bad, and there must have been good in Black Jack. I want to know all about him. I want to know about—his crimes."
He labored through a fierce moment of silent struggle while her heart went helplessly out to him.
"Because—I had a hand in every one of those crimes! Everything that he did is something that I might have done under the same temptation."
"But you're not all your father's son. You had a mother. A dear, sweet- faced girl—"