“You needn’t go, my dear,” said her father quickly.  “Indeed, I think, perhaps—­”

“Is your Helen very poor?” quietly asked the little girl, possessing herself of his hand again, “because if she is she can have”—­she looked over at the pile of toys—­“Well, I’ll see.  I’ll give her lots of things, and—­”

“What’s this?” broke out the younger man harshly, extending his hand with the letter in it toward the other.

“It is a letter to you from our father.”

“And you kept it from me?” cried the other.

“Read it,” said William Carstairs.

With trembling hands “Crackerjack” tore it open.  It was a message of love and forgiveness penned by a dying hand.

“If I had had this then I might have been a different man,” said the poor wretch.

“There is another paper under it, or there should be, in the same drawer,” went on William Carstairs, imperturbably.  “Perhaps you would better read that.”

John Carstairs needed no second invitation.  He turned to the open drawer and took out the next paper.  It was a copy of a will.  The farm and business had been left to William, but one half of it was to be held in trust for his brother.  The man read it and then he crushed the paper in his hand.

“And that, too, might have saved me.  My God!” he cried, “I’ve been a drunken blackguard.  I’ve gone down to the very depths.  I have been in State’s prison.  I was, I am, a thief, but I never would have withheld a dying man’s forgiveness from his son.  I never would have kept a poor wretch who was crazy with shame and who drank himself into crime out of his share of the property.”

Animated by a certain fell purpose, he leaped across the room and seized the pistol.

“Yes, and I have you now!” he cried.  “I’ll make you pay.”

He levelled the weapon at his brother with a steady hand.

“What are you doin’ to do wif that pistol?” said young John William, curiously looking up from his stocking, while Helen cried out.  The little woman acted the better part.  With rare intuition she came quickly and took the left hand of the man and patted it gently.  For one thing, her father was not afraid, and that reassured her.  John Carstairs threw the pistol down again.  William Carstairs had never moved.

“Now,” he said, “let me explain.”

“Can you explain away this?”

“I can.  Father’s will was not opened until the day after you left.  As God is my judge I did not know he had written to you.  I did not know he had left anything to you.  I left no stone unturned in an endeavour to find you.  I employed the best detectives in the land, but we found no trace of you whatever.  Why, John, I have only been sorry once that I let you go that night, that I spoke those words to you, and that has been all the time.”

“And where does this come from?” said the man, flinging his arm up and confronting the magnificent room.