THE SON OF HIS FATHER

BY
MRS. OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF
“IT WAS A LOVER AND HIS LASS,” “AGNES,”
“THE LAIRD OF NORLAW,”
ETC., ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1887.
All rights reserved.

CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME.

CHAPTER PAGE
[I.][When he was a Child][1]
[II.][When he was a Child (continued)][18]
[III.][How he was to begin Life][35]
[IV.][John’s Choice][53]
[V.][An Adventure][71]
[VI.][Grandmamma][89]
[VII.][Comrades][106]
[VIII.][A Call for Emily][123]
[IX.][John’s Letter][139]
[X.][The Reply][156]
[XI.][The Shadow of Death][174]
[XII.][Emily][192]
[XIII.][What the Parish thought][210]
[XIV.][Mr. Sandford’s Daughter][229]
[XV.][A Visit to the Foundry][247]
[XVI.][Research][264]
[XVII.][Mother and Son][283]
[XVIII.][Farewell][301]

THE SON OF HIS FATHER.

CHAPTER I.
WHEN HE WAS A CHILD.

‘Don’t say anything before the boy.’

This was one of the first things he remembered. In the confused recollections of that early age, he seemed to have been always hearing it: said between his mother and his sister, afterwards between his grandparents, even by strangers one to another, always, ‘Don’t say anything before the boy.’ What it was, about which nothing was to be said, he had very little idea, and, indeed, grew up to be a man before, in the light of sudden revelations, he began to put these scattered gleams together, and see what they meant. They confused his little soul from the beginning, throwing strange lights and stranger shadows across his path, keeping around him a sort of unreality, a sense that things were not as they seemed.

His name was John in those days: certainly John—of that there was no doubt: called Johnnie, when people were kind, sometimes Jack—but John he always was. He had a faint sort of notion that it had not always been John Sandford. But this was not clear in his mind. It was all confused with the rest of the broken reminiscences which concerned the time in which everybody was so anxious that nothing should be said before the boy.