"To the end that you may live, my son. Remember what your father's love has been to you. No, not that—but think what it must have been to him. Your father would know you were alive. It is true he would never, never see you. Yes, we should always be apart—you there, and I here—and I should take your hand and see your face no more. But you would be alive—"
"Father, do you call it living? Think if I could bear it. Suppose I escaped—suppose I were safe in some place far away—Australia, America, anywhere out of the reach of shame and death—suppose I were well, ay, and prosperous as the world goes—what then?"
"Then I should be content, my son. Yes, content, and thanking God."
"And I should be the most wretched of men. Only think of it, and picture me there. I should know, though there were none to tell me, I should remember it as often as the sun rose above me, that at home, thousands of miles away, my poor father, the righteous Bishop that once was, the leader of his people and their good father, was the slave of the lowest offal of them all, powerless to raise his hand for the hands that were held over him, dumb to reprove for the evil tongues that threatened to speak ill. And, as often as night came and I tried to sleep, I should see him there growing old, very old, and, maybe, very feeble, and wanting an arm to lean on, and good people to honor him and to make him forget—yes, forget the mad shipwreck of his son's life, but with eyes that could not lift themselves from the earth for secret shame, tortured by fears of dishonor, self-tormented and degraded before the face of his God. No, no, no, I can not take such sacrifice."
The Bishop had drawn nearer to Dan and tried to take his hand. When Dan was silent he did not speak at once, and when Dan sat on his stone seat he sat beside him, gentle as a child, and very meek and quiet, and felt for his hand again, and held it, though Dan would have drawn it away. Then, as they sat together, nearer the old Bishop crept, nearer and yet nearer, until one of his trembling arms encircled Dan's neck and the dear head was drawn down to his swelling, throbbing breast, as if it were a child's head still, and it was a father's part to comfort it and to soothe away its sorrows.
"Then we will go together," he said, after a time, in a faint forlornness of voice, "to the utmost reaches of the earth, leaving all behind us, and thinking no more of the past. Yes, we will go together," he said, very quietly, and he rose to his feet, still holding Dan's hand.
Dan was suffocating with shame. "Father," he said, "I see all now; you think me innocent, and so you would leave everything for my sake. But I am a guilty man."
"Hush! you shall not say that. Don't tell me that. No one shall tell me that. I will not hear it."
The hot eagerness of the Bishop's refusal to hear with his ears the story of his son's guilt told Dan but too surely that he had already heard it with his heart.
"Father, no one would need to tell you. You would find it out for yourself. And think of that awful undeceiving! You would take your son's part against the world, believing in him, but you would read his secret bit by bit, day by day. His crime would steal in between you like a spectre, it would separate you hour by hour, until at length you would be forever apart. And that end would be the worst end of all. No, it can not be. Justice is against it; love is against it. And God, I think God must be against it, too."