The one point in Plymouth to which everybody naturally turns is the Hoe, and thither Michael went.  It was morning in early autumn or late summer, and the whole Sound lay spread out under the sun in perfect peace.  The woods of Mount Edgecumbe were almost black in the intense light, and far away in the distance, for the air was clear, a sharp eye might just discern the Eddystone, the merest speck, rising above the water.  It was a wonderful scene, but Michael saw nothing of it.  When he came out of the street which leads up from the town to the Hoe, he looked round as a man might look for escape if a devouring fire were behind him, and he saw his son a hundred yards in front of him gazing over the sea.  With a cry of thanks to his God Michael rushed forward, and just as Robert turned round caught him in his arms, but could not speak.

At last he found a few words.

“It is all a mistake, Robert—­it is all wrong.  Susan is yours—­she is mine.  Come back with me.”

Robert, as much moved as his father, fell on his neck as if he had been a woman, and then led him gently down the slope, away from curious persons who had watched this remarkable greeting, and took Michael to be some strange person who had accidentally met his child or a relative after long separation.

“Foreigners, most likely; that’s their way.  It looks odd to English people,” remarked a lady to her daughter.  It did look odd, and would have looked odd to most of us—­to us who belong to a generation which sees in the relationship between father and son nothing more than in that between the most casual acquaintances with the disadvantage of inequality of age, a generation to whom the father is—­often excusably—­a person to be touched twice a day with the tips of the fingers, a postponement of a full share in the business, a person to be treated with—­respect?  Good gracious!  If it were not bad form, it would be a joke worth playing to slip the chair away from the old man as he is going to sit down, and see him sprawl on the floor.  Why, in the name of heaven, does he come up to the City every day?  He ought to retire, and leave that expensive place at Clapham, and take a cottage in some cheap part, somewhere in Cambridgeshire or Essex.

“Robert,” said Michael, “I have sinned, although it was for the Lord’s sake, and He has rebuked me.  I thought to take upon myself His direction of His affairs; but He is wiser than I. I believed I was sure of His will, but I was mistaken.  He knows that what I did, I did for love of your soul, my child; but I was grievously wrong.”

The father humbled himself before the son, but in his humiliation became majestic, and in after years, when he was dead and gone, there was no scene in the long intercourse with him which lived with a brighter and fairer light in the son’s memory.

“You know nothing then against Susan?”

“Nothing!”

“I found a bit of a letter on your desk from Cadman.  I could not help reading it.  Had that anything to do with her?”