"Ay, for aught I know."

Stephen Orry struggled to his elbow again. "Then he had wronged your mother?" he said with his breath coming quick.

"Ay, maybe so."

"The villain! Yet who am I to rail at him? Is your mother still alive?"

"No."

"Where is your father?"

"Don't speak of him," said Jason in an under-breath.

"But what's your name, my lad?"

"Jason."

With a long sigh of relief Stephen Orry dropped back and muttered to himself, "To think that such a father should never have known he had such a son."