“Yes,” said the Angel’s father.

“Do you think you have the very worst of it clear to your understanding?”

Under Freckles’ earnest eyes the Man of Affairs answered soberly:  “I think I have, Mr. O’More.”

That was the first time Freckles heard his name from the lips of another.  One second he lay overcome; the next, tears filled his eyes, and he reached out his hand.  Then the Angel’s father understood, and he clasped that hand and held it in a strong, firm grasp.

“Terence, my boy,” he said, “let me do the talking.  I came here with the understanding that you wanted to ask me for my only child.  I should like, at the proper time, to regard her marriage, if she has found the man she desires to marry, not as losing all I have, but as gaining a man on whom I can depend to love as a son and to take charge of my affairs for her when I retire from business.  Bend all of your energies toward rapid recovery, and from this hour understand that my daughter and my home are yours.”

“You’re not forgetting this?”

Freckles lifted his right arm.

“Terence, I’m sorrier than I have words to express about that,” said the Man of Affairs.  “It’s a damnable pity!  But if it’s for me to choose whether I give all I have left in this world to a man lacking a hand, or to one of these gambling, tippling, immoral spendthrifts of today, with both hands and feet off their souls, and a rotten spot in the core, I choose you; and it seems that my daughter does the same.  Put what is left you of that right arm to the best uses you can in this world, and never again mention or feel that it is defective so long as you live.  Good day, sir!”

“One minute more,” said Freckles.  “Yesterday the Angel was telling me that there was money coming to me from two sources.  She said that me grandmother had left me father all of her fortune and her house, because she knew that his father would be cutting him off, and also that me uncle had set aside for me what would be me father’s interest in his father’s estate.

“Whatever the sum is that me grandmother left me father, because she loved him and wanted him to be having it, that I’ll be taking.  ’Twas hers from her father, and she had the right to be giving it as she chose.  Anything from the man that knowingly left me father and me mother to go cold and hungry, and into the fire in misery, when just a little would have made life so beautiful to them, and saved me this crippled body—­money that he willed from me when he knew I was living, of his blood and on charity among strangers, I don’t touch, not if I freeze, starve, and burn too!  If there ain’t enough besides that, and I can’t be earning enough to fix things for the Angel——­”

“We are not discussing money!” burst in the Man of Affairs.  “We don’t want any blood-money!  We have all we need without it.  If you don’t feel right and easy over it, don’t you touch a cent of any of it.”