“I will be in London tonight, Mr. Lugur.  You are a friend worth having.  I thank you.”

“Good-bye!  I leave for Cardiff at once.  I leave Harry with God and you—­and I would not be hard with Harry.”

“I shall not.  I love Harry.”

“You cannot help loving him.  He is doing wrong, but you cannot stop loving him, and you know it was while as yet we were sinners, God loved and saved us.  Good-bye, sir!”

The door closed and John turned the key and sat down for a few minutes to consider his position.  This sorrow on the top of his disagreement with Jane and his anxiety about the threatened war in America called forth all his latent strength.  He told himself that he must now put personal feelings aside and give his attention first of all to Harry’s case, it being evidently the most urgent of the duties before him.  Jane if left for a few days would no doubt be more reasonable.  Greenwood could be safely left to look after Hatton mill and to buy for it all the cotton he could lay his hands on.  He had not the time to visit his mother, but he wrote her a few words of explanation and as he knew Jane’s parlors were full of women, he sent her the following note: 

     MY DEARLY LOVED WIFE,

Instant and important business takes me at a moment’s notice to London.  I have no time to come and see you, and solace my heart with a parting glance of your beauty, to hear your whispered good-bye, or taste the living sweetness of your kiss, but you will be constantly present with me.  Waking, I shall be loving and thinking of you; sleeping I shall be dreaming of you.  Dearest of all sweet, fair women, do not forget me.  Let me throb with your heart and live in your constant memory.  I will write you every day, and you will make all my work easy and all my hours happy if you send me a few kind words to the Charing Cross Hotel.  I do not think I shall be more than three or four days absent, but however short or long the time may be, I am beyond all words,

     Your devoted husband,
     JOHN HATTON.

This letter written, John hurried to the railway station, but in spite of express trains, it was dark when he reached London, and long after seven o’clock when he reached his brother’s house.  He noticed at once that the parlors were unlit and that the whole building had a dark, unprosperous, unhappy appearance.  A servant woman admitted him, and almost simultaneously Lucy came running downstairs to meet him, for during the years that had passed since her marriage to Harry Hatton, Lucy had become a real sister to John and he had for her a most sincere affection.

They went into a parlor in which there had been a fire and stood talking for a few moments.  But the fire was nearly out, and the girl had only left a candle on the table, and Lucy said, “I was sitting upstairs, John, beside the children.  Harry told me it would be late when he returned home, so I went to the nursery.  You see children are such good company.  Will you go with me to the nursery?  It is the girl’s night out, but if you prefer to——­”