It began, “Boy dear—­”

“I wonder if I shall make you understand what it is so necessary that you should understand?  It has been so hard all of these years when your clear little lad’s eyes have looked into mine to feel that some day you might blame—­me.  Youth is so uncompromising, Derry, dear—­and so logical—­so demanding of—­justice.  And life isn’t logical—­or just—­not with the sharp-edged justice which gives cakes to the good little boys and switches to the bad ones.  And you have always insisted on the cakes and switches, Derry, and that’s why I am afraid of you.

“Even when you were only ten and I hugged you close in the night—­those nights when we were alone, Derry, and your father was out on some wild road under the moonlight, or perhaps with the snow shutting out the moon, you used to whisper, ‘But he oughtn’t to do it, Mother—­’ And I knew that he ought not, but, oh, Derry, I loved him, and do you remember, I used to say, ’But he’s so good to us, Laddie,—­and perhaps we can love him enough to make him stop.’

“But you are a man now, Derry.  I am sure you will be a man before you read this, for my little boy will obey me until he comes to man’s estate, and then he may say ’She was only a foolish loving woman, and why should I be bound?’

“I know when that moment comes that all your father’s money will not hold you.  You will not sell your soul’s honor for your inheritance.  Haven’t I known it all along?  Haven’t I seen you a little shining knight ready to do battle for your ideals?  And haven’t I seen the clash of those ideals with the reality of your father’s fault?

“Well, there’s this to think of now, Derry, now that you are a man—­that life isn’t white and black, it isn’t sheep and goats—­it isn’t just good people and bad people with a great wall between.  Life is gray and amethyst, it is a touch of dinginess on the fleece of the whole flock, and the men and women whom you meet will be those whose great faults are balanced by great virtues and whose little meannesses are contradicted by unexpected generosities.

“I am putting it this way because I want you to realize that except for the one fault which has shadowed your father’s life, there is no flaw in him.  Other men have gone through the world apparently untouched by any temptation, but their families could tell you the story of a thousand tyrannies, their clerks could tell you of selfishness and hardness, their churches and benevolent societies could tell you of their lack of charity.  Oh, there are plenty of good men in the world, Derry, strong and fine and big, I want you to believe that always, but I want you to believe, too, that there are men who struggle continually with temptation and seem to fail, but they fight with an enemy so formidable that I, who have seen the struggle, have shut my eyes—­afraid to look—.

“And now I shall go back to the very beginning, and tell you how it all happened.  Your father was only a boy when the Civil War broke out.  He came down from Massachusetts with a regiment which had in it the blood of the farmers who fired the shot heard round the world—.  He felt that he was fighting for Freedom—­he had all of your ideals, Derry; plus, perhaps, a few of his own.