"You let him off without telling his name to-night. And that made me think maybe he wasn't in wrong so far as I thought. Maybe there were—what-ye-call-'em?—mitigating circumstances. Were there?"
A light broke in upon the Reverend Norman Hale. "Did you think your son was Milly Neal's lover? He wasn't."
"Are you sure?" gasped the father.
"As sure as of my faith in Heaven."
The old man straightened up, drawing a breath so profound that it seemed to raise his stature.
"I wouldn't take a million dollars for that word," he declared.
"But your own part in this?" queried the other in wonderment. "I hated to have to say—"
"What does it matter?"
"You have no concern for yourself?" puzzled the minister.
"Oh, I'll come out on top. I always come out on top. What got to my heart was my boy. I thought he'd gone wrong. And now I know he hasn't."