It was with thoughts like these that Dan had spent his first hours in prison, and when old Gorry had interrupted them time after time with poor little troubles about the freezing cold of the pestilential place he hardly saw through the old man's simulation into the tender bit of human nature that lay behind it.
A few minutes after Gorry had left the cell, in answer to the loud knocking that had echoed through the empty chambers overhead, Dan could hear that he was returning to it, halting slowly down the steps with many a pause, and mumbling remarks meantime, as if lighting some one who came after him.
"Yes, my lord, it's dark, very dark. I'll set the lantern here, my lord, and turn the key."
In another moment old Gorry was at Dan's side, saying, in a fearful undertone, "Lord 'a' massy! It's the Bishop hisself. I lied to him mortal, so I did—but no use—I said you were sleeping, but no good at all, at all. He wouldn't take rest without putting a sight on you. Here he is—Come in, my lord."
Almost before Dan's mind, distraught by other troubles, had time to grasp what Gorry said, the old jailer had clapped his lantern on the floor of the cell, and had gone from it, and Dan was alone with his father.
"Dan, are you awake?" the Bishop asked, in a low, eager tone. His eyes were not yet familiar with the half-light of the dark place, and he could not see his son. But Dan saw his father only too plainly, and one glance at him in that first instant of recovered consciousness went far to banish as an empty sophism the soothing assurance he had lately nursed at his heart that in what he had done he had done well.
The Bishop was a changed and shattered man. His very stature seemed to have shrunk, and his Jovian white head was dipped into his breast. His great calm front was gone, and in the feeble light of the lantern on the floor his eyes were altered and his face seemed to be cut deep with lines of fear and even of cunning. His irresolute mouth was half-open, as if it had only just emitted a startled cry. In one of his hands he held a small parcel bound tightly with a broad strap, and the other hand wandered nervously in the air before him.
Dan saw everything in an instant. This, then, was the first-fruits of that day's work. He rose from his seat.
"Father!" he cried, in a faint, tremulous voice.
"My son!" the Bishop answered, and for some swift moments thereafter the past that had been very bitter to both was remembered no more by either.