“Placing a watch upon his movements—­no easy matter, for he is very shrewd and cautious—­I soon found out that the law club was a myth, and that his nights were passed in the wildest debauchery.  He had not only resumed all his old vices, but had acquired new ones.

“When I reproved him, as I did with just indignation, he threw off the mask of concealment, which he said he was tired of wearing, and became the same bold, defiant, reckless boy that he always was; while I continued to be the same weak, foolish, fond parent.  I cannot recount the tortures inflicted upon me by my son since that fatal discovery.  He has not only abandoned all his law studies (having been expelled from the office of Mulroy, Biggup & Lartimore for grossly insulting a young female client), and utterly ruined his own body and soul, but, by his acts, he has brought shame upon several families.

“When this new series of outrages came to my knowledge, I threatened to disinherit him.  He laughed at me.  He knew how I loved him for his mother’s sake, and, with that hold upon my affections, he defied me.

“To heartless indifference he gradually added insults, and often cursed me, his own father, in this very room, where his mother has rocked his cradle a thousand times while she listened to my reading of an old poem or novel.  The last of his crimes of which I have heard, was brought to my knowledge about six weeks ago.  It was a piece of treachery the most villanous, and I told my son, in plain words, what I thought of it.  I was weak and nervous from an illness which is hereditary in my family, and I reprimanded him with more severity than usual.  I told him, that if God, in His infinite mercy, spared him, yet he was not secure from just punishment from the friends of those whom he had wronged, and that the human vengeance, which had been so long postponed, would surely come.  He looked at me with malice in his small gray eyes (not his mother’s eyes), and, when I ceased speaking, raised both hands to heaven, and, with the most horrible blasphemy, called down its curses upon me; and then he swore, that if I crossed his path, or thwarted his plans, or refused him money, he would kill me.

“Just before he uttered this monstrous threat, I sprang from my chair with horror, and caught him imploringly by both hands.  I would have saved him from that dreadful act, but I was too late.  I saw him wrench away his right hand, and raise it to strike me back....  I knew no more, until Mrs. Frump, my niece, who has had charge of my household during the past three years, entered the room, and found me stretched insensible on the floor.”

“I saw a part of the sad scene,” said Marcus Wilkeson, who had listened with mingled indignation and compassion to this strange tale.  “Your son was standing by that window, and you were sitting near him, also within sight of me.  I distinctly saw you catch your son’s hands with your own; he wrenched the right one away, and raised it; then you fell, but he did not strike you, or attempt to.  As you dropped to the floor, he glanced anxiously through the window, saw me watching him, and then pulled down the curtain.”