Wilbur had worked himself up to a high pitch of excitement, and his father quailed beneath his eye.
“I will atone for the past,” said Hilton Field.
“It is too late, old man!” exclaimed the son. “I can never be other than I am, a thief, the friend of thieves, a counterfeiter, a forger and a murderer.”
“Think of your mother!”
“Did you think of her, or did you pay any heed to her appeals when you turned me from your door?” cried Wilbur. “Did you not threaten her, that if she extended any aid to me that you would cast her off? Do I not speak the truth, old man? What do your millions and that blue blood that has always been your boast avail you now? Downstairs are men that at a word from me would take your life.”
“I repeat,” said the father, “that I will atone for the past. I will recognize your wife and children—I believe you are a father—and take you back. Think of your sister, how she suffers because of me.”
“Bah! you taught her to hate me long ago,” said Wilbur.
“Give up this life,” pleaded the banker. “I will give you half of what I possess.”
“I want it not,” was the rejoinder; “all your millions could not make white my blood-stained soul. Some day I may reach the gallows, and it will read nicely in fashionable society that the son of the banker, Hilton Field, was hanged for murder.”
Once more the gray-haired old men knelt at his son’s feet.