I fixed my eyes upon the young man to see what effect this coarse and irreverent allusion to his father would have.  A slight tinge of shame was in his face; but I saw that he had not sufficient moral courage to resent the shameful desecration of a parent’s name.  How should he, when he was himself the first to desecrate that name?

“If he were forty fathoms deep in the infernal regions,” answered Slade, “he’d find out that Ned was here, and get half an hour’s leave of absence to come after him.  The fact is, I’m tired of seeing his solemn, sanctimonious face here every night.  If the boy hasn’t spirit enough to tell him to mind his own business, as I have done more than fifty times, why, let the boy stay away himself.”

“Why don’t you send him off with a flea in his ear, Ned?” said one of the company, a young man scarcely his own age.  “My old man tried that game with me, but he soon found that I could hold the winning cards.”

“Just what I’m going to do the very next time he comes after me.”

“Oh, yes!  So you’ve said twenty times,” remarked Frank Slade, in a sneering, insolent manner.

Edward Hargrove had not the spirit to resent this; he only answered: 

“Just let him show himself here to-night, and you will see.”

“No, we won’t see,” sneered Frank.

“Wouldn’t it be fun!” was exclaimed.  “I hope to be on hand, should it ever come off.”

“He’s as ’fraid as death of the old chap,” laughed a sottish-looking man, whose age ought to have inspired him with some respect for the relation between father and son, and doubtless would, had not a long course of drinking and familiarity with debasing associates blunted his moral sense.

“Now for it!” I heard uttered, in a quick, delighted voice.  “Now for fun!  Spunk up to him, Ned!  Never say die!”

I turned toward the door, and there stood the father of Edward Hargrove.  How well I remembered the broad, fine forehead, the steady, yet mild eyes, the firm lips, the elevated, superior bearing of the man I had once before seen in that place, and on a like errand.  His form was slightly bent now; his hair was whiter; his eyes farther back in his head; his face thinner and marked with deeper lines; and there was in the whole expression of his face a touching sadness.  Yet, superior to the marks of time and suffering, an unflinching resolution was visible in his countenance, that gave to it a dignity, and extorted involuntary respect.  He stood still, after advancing a few paces, and then, his searching eyes having discovered his son, he said mildly, yet firmly, and with such a strength of parental love in his voice that resistance was scarcely possible: 

“Edward!  Edward!  Come, my son.”

“Don’t go.”  The words were spoken in an undertone, and he who uttered them turned his face away from Mr. Hargrove, so that the old man could not see the motion of his lips.  A little while before, he had spoken bravely against the father of Edward; now, he could not stand up in his presence.