I have asked you for a morsel of bread—­to hear you wish me dead, and to see you watch me with hungry eager eyes, as if in my wasted meagre countenance you wished to find a prophetic answer—­were sights and sounds of every-day occurrence.  Could such conduct as this beget love in your wretched child?  Yet, God knows!” exclaimed the young man, clasping his hands forcibly together, while tears started to his eyes—­“God knows how earnestly I have prayed to love you, to forget and forgive these unnatural injuries, which have cast the shadow of care over the bright morning of youth, and made the world and all that it contains a wilderness of woe to my blighted heart.”

The old man regarded him with a sullen scowl; but whatever were his feelings (and that he did feel the whole truth of the young man’s passionate appeal, the restless motion of his foot and hand sufficiently indicated) he returned no answer; and Anthony emboldened by despair, and finding a relief in giving utterance to the long pent-up feelings which for years had corroded his breast, continued,

“I rightly concluded that I should be considered by you, Mr. Hurdlestone, an unwelcome visitor.  Hateful to the sight of the injurer is the person of the injured, and I stand before you a living reproach, an awful witness both here and hereafter at the throne of God of what you ought to have been, and what you have neglected to be—­a father to your motherless child.  But let that pass.  I am in the hands of One who is the protector of the innocent, and in His righteous hands I leave my cause.  Your brother, sir, who has been a father to me, is in prison.  His heart, sorely pressed by his painful situation, droops to the grave.  I came to see if you, out of your abundance, are willing to save him, Father, let your old grudge be forgotten.  Let the child of your poor lost Elinor be the means of reconciling you to each other.  Cease to remember him as a rival:  behold him only in the light of a brother—­of that twin brother who shared your cradle—­of a friend whom you have deeply injured—­a generous fellow-creature fallen, whom you have the power to raise up and restore.  Let not the kind protector of your son end his days in a jail, when a small sum, which never could be missed from your immense wealth, would enable him to end his days in peace.”

“A small sum!” responded the miser, with a bitter laugh.  “Let me hear what you, consider a small sum.  Your uncle has the impudence to demand of me the sum of two thousand pounds, which is his idea of a small sum, which he considers a trifling remuneration for bringing up and educating my son from the age of seven years to twenty.  Anthony Hurdlestone, go back to your employer, and tell him that I never expended that sum in sixty years.”

“You do not mean to dismiss me, sir, with this cruel and insulting message?”

“From me, young man, you will obtain no other.”