Leighton paused again, before he went on in a dull voice.

“After that I can tell you what happened only from hearsay.  Aunt Jed came and took you and what was left of Jeanette, your mother.  Sometime you must stop in the churchyard down yonder under the steeple and look for a little slab that tells nothing—­nothing except that Jeanette died a wife before the law and—­and much beloved before God.

“They kept me at William’s for days until I was in my right mind.  The day they took me home was the day father paid for the horses—­the day he died.  I don’t know if he would have forgiven me if he had lived.  I never saw him again alive, after he knew.  I’ve often wondered.  I would give a lot to know, even to-day, that he would have forgiven.  But life is like that.  Death strikes and leaves us blind—­blind to some vital spring of love, could we but find it and touch it.”

Lewis was young.  Just to hear the burden that had lain so long upon his father’s heart was too much for him.  Not for nothing had Leighton lived beside his boy.  There, under the still trees, their souls reached out and touched.  Lewis dropped his head and arms upon his father’s knees and sobbed.  He felt as though his whole heart was welling up in tears.

Leighton’s hand fell caressingly upon him.  He did not speak until his boy had finished crying, then he said: 

“I’ve told you all this because you alone in all the world have a right to know, a right to know your full inheritance—­the inheritance of a child of love.”

Leighton paused.

“I never saw you again,” he went on, “until that day when we met down there at the ends of the earth.  Aunt Jed had sent you down there to hide you from me.  Before she died she told me where you were and sent me to you.  She needn’t have told me to go after you.

“As you go on and meet a wider world, you will hear strange things of your father.  Believe them all, and then, if you can, still remember.  Don’t waste love.  That’s a prayer and a charge.  I’ve wasted a lot of life and self, but never a jot of love.  Now go, boy.  Tell them I’ve stayed behind for supper.”

Lewis did not hurry.  When he reached the homestead, it was already late.  Mrs. Tuck had kept their supper hot for them.  When she saw Lewis come in alone, she rushed up to him with eager questions of his father.  Lewis looked with new eyes upon her kindly anxious face.

“It’s all right,” he said.  “Dad stayed behind.  He doesn’t want any supper.”

Mrs. Tuck looked shrewdly at him, and then turned away.

“It ain’t never all right,” she said half to herself, “when a man full-grown don’t want his supper.”

Lewis saw nothing more of his father that night.  He tried to keep awake, but it was long after sleep had conquered him that Leighton came in.  And during the days that followed he saw less and less of his father.  Early in the morning Leighton would be up.  He would eat, and then wander about the place listlessly with his cigar.  His head hanging, he would wander farther and farther from the house until, almost without volition, he would suddenly strike off in a straight line across the hills.