“Don’t be foolish,” said he, who was now as composed as he had lately been wild and excited. “We may be wrong after all.”
“But there can be no doubt,” I said. “This Mrs Shield is his old nurse and his sister’s—he has told me so himself—who took care of them when their father—went away.”
Mr Smith sighed.
“Surely,” I cried, “you will come and tell Jack all about it?”
“Not yet,” said he, quietly. “I have waited all these years; I can wait two days more—till his examinations are over—and then you must do it for me, my boy.”
It was late before I left him and went up to my bed in Jack’s room.
There he lay sound asleep, with pale, untroubled face, dreaming perhaps of his examination to-morrow, but little dreaming of what was in store when that was over.
It was little enough I could sleep during the night. As I lay and tossed and thought over the events of the evening, I did not know whether to be happy or afraid. Supposing Jack should refuse to own his father! Suppose, when he heard that story of sin and shame, he should turn and repudiate the father who had so cruelly wronged him and his sister!
What a story it was! And yet, as I went over its details and pictured to myself the tragedy of that ruined life, I trembled to think how nearly a similar story might have been mine, had I not by God’s grace been mercifully arrested in time.
Who was I, to think ill of him? He had been driven to his ruin by a shock which had nearly robbed him of reason. I had fallen through sheer vanity and folly, and who was to say I might not have fallen as low as he, had there been no hand to save me, no friend to recall me, by God’s mercy, to myself?