"In the West Indies, when I was a little fellow. Papa's regiment was quartered there. We had an old black servant, who taught me. He used to carry me to the water, and let me sport in it like an alligator. Few can swim as I do."
"I have been very distant to you since I came here. You cannot but have observed it," resumed Mr. Loftus, making the confession as an atonement in his impulse of generosity; and indeed he had very markedly held himself aloof from the boy in his pride and condemnation. "This has made me ashamed of myself."
"Don't say anything, sir. I quite understood it. If my father had been the rogue you believed, it was only what I, his son, deserved."
"As I believed," repeated Mr. Loftus, sad commiseration in his tone. "All the world believed it, George."
"I know they did, sir."
"Well, it is not what I can enter upon with you; and I begin now to see how unjust my feeling to you has been. I—"
"But I wish you would enter upon it, sir; I wish you would let me say how certain I am that my father was innocent," interrupted George, his face becoming flushed with a crimson glow, his eyes raised full and earnest to those of Mr. Loftus. "I was only a young lad when it happened, between twelve and thirteen; but I was old enough to judge. Why, Mr. Loftus, but for feeling myself free of that inheritance of guilt, could I have gone on bravely as I have, and done battle with the difficulties thrown in my path—the contempt I have had to stand? At Orville College there has been a dead-set against me from the first—an awful opposition; and I am quite sure that past charge against my father is the foundation of it, though it may not be generally known to the school. When I feel inclined to give in, beaten and hopeless, I say to myself, 'He was innocent, and I'll bear up in spite of all this for his sake;' and that gives me pluck to fight on again."
"Did you know the particulars of the case?" asked Mr. Loftus, admiring the brave and hopeful nature, in spite of his wonder that any such opinion on the late Captain Paradyne's case could for one moment obtain, even with his son.
"Yes, every one of them," replied George. "I don't suppose there was a single item that did not fix itself on my heart. The sudden discovery—made first of all by you, sir—that something seemed wrong, and then the looking into it privately by yourself and Mr. Trace, and your finding out the frauds, and the arrest of my father. If he had only lived out the investigation, he would have disproved the charge."
"You wish me to speak of this unreservedly to you, I see, as if you were a stranger," observed Mr. Loftus; in answer, as it seemed, to the boy's vehemence.