Perry, pale as death and still of feeble brain, had arisen as he spoke and made this imploration with only the eloquence of haggard forgetfulness.  The Judge took Perry’s hands and supported him.

“My son, have I not earned the name of father?  Yes, I have plucked the poison-arrow from my heart and sucked its venom.  I have taken the offspring of my injurer and warmed it in my bosom.  Every morning when you arose I was reminded of my dishonor.  Every night when we kissed good-night, I felt, God knows, that I had loved my enemies and done good to them which injured me!”

The young man, looking up and around in the impotence of expression, saw the portraits of the dead Whaleys in unbroken lineal respectability, bending their eyes upon him—­the one, the only impostor of the name!

“Perry,” continued the Judge, “I am not wholly guilty of keeping you blind.  I have told you many times that between us was a gap, a rift of something.  I have sometimes said, as your artless caresses, mixed with the bitter recollection of your origin, almost dispossessed my reason, that you were ‘my demon.’”

“Yes, father; but I was so anxious to love you that I never brooded on that.  I see it all!  Every repulse comes back to me now.  You have suffered, indeed, and been the Christian.  But I must hear the tale before I depart.”

“Depart!  Where?”

“To find my mother, if she lives.  To find my name!  I cannot bear this one.  It would be deceit.”

“Not even the name of My Son?”

“Alas! no.  Just as I am I must be known.  My putative father, if he lives, must give me another name.”

“Thank God, Perry, he is dead!”

“But not his name.  I can make honorable even my—­”

“Say it not!” exclaimed the Judge, placing his hand upon Perry’s mouth.  “Pure as all your life has been, you shall not degrade it with such a word.  Oh, my son!—­my orphan son!—­dear faithful prattler around my feet for all these desolate and haunted years, I have doubted for your sake every thing—­that wedlock was good, that pride of virtuous origin was wise, that human jealousy was any thing but a tiger’s selfishness.  I did not sow the seed that brought you forth; too well I know it!  Yet grateful and fair has been the vine as if watered by the tears of angels; and when I sleep the demon in you fades, and then, at least, your loving tendrils find all my nature an arbor to take you up!”

“Would to God!” said Perry bitterly, “that in the sleep of everlasting death we laid together.  O my God! how I have loved you—­father!”

The Judge enfolded the young man in his arms and like a child Perry rested there.  The lamp, previously burning very low, went out for want of oil, as the old man nursed like his own babe the serpent’s offspring, not his own but another’s untimely son, bred on the honor of a husband’s name.  As they sat in the perfect darkness of the old riverside mansion, Judge Whaley told his tale.